Help


About ads



About messages on ads



About email alerts



About user accounts



Misc


I lost my dog, what should I do?

Read the Lost Dog Guide.

What should I do so that it does not happen again?

Tattooing or putting a chip on your pet is an indispensable step and will guarantee you a much greater chance of finding it!

I found a dog, what should I do?

Read the Found Dog Guide.

Section "Reunited"

Do you want your ad to be displayed in the "Reunited" section? To do this, click the link to delete your ad. An option will let you indicate that you want to display your ad in this section.

How do I delete my ad?

Following the publication of your ad and then every week you automatically receive an e-mail from the site (I do not receive this email). In this email you will find a link to delete your ad. Click on this link and answer a few questions. This same link allows you to display your ad in the "Reunited" section.

How do I update my ad?

Following the publication of your ad and then every week you automatically receive an e-mail from the site (I do not receive this email). In this email you will find a link to edit your ad. Click on this link, you will be able to update all the information of your ad.

I want to add/update the picture

Following the publication of your ad and then every week you automatically receive an e-mail from the site (I do not receive this email). In this email you will find a link to edit your ad. Click on this link, then, using the menu, choose "photo". You can then add/edit photos of your ad. You can add up to 5 photos to your ad.

I cannot add a picture to my ad

Your photo must be in JPEG/JPG format and weight less than 1MB. You can use a cropping tool to reduce the size of an existing photo. Otherwise, I invite you to get help from someone you know. You can add up to 5 photos to your ad.

Inactive ad

If the publisher of an ad has not spoken in the messages of his ad in the last 12 months, then the ad is considered inactive and it is removed from the site.
Before this automatic deletion, the publisher will receive 4 warnings by e-mail in the month preceding the deletion. In order to prevent this automatic deletion, the publisher must express himself regularly on his ad while making sure to use the same exact e-mail address used when creating his ad. If the two e-mail addresses are the same, then the label "Publisher of this ad" appears next to the nickname on the message.
Note that the publisher must publish a message on their ad, editing the ad text or posting a message on another ad will not make their own ad active.
See the paragraph below to reactivate an ad.

This feature is in place on the site so that volunteers, associations, professionals... do not waste their time on abandoned ads. As a publisher, you must show that you are active in the search for the animal or its owner. And for this, post a message at least every 12 months.

Reactivate your ad

You can reactivate your inactive ad in your personal account. To do this, sign in to your account or create your account and then in the list of your ads, click the "reactivate" link facing the corresponding ad.
Please note that you must create your account by entering the exact same e-mail address as the one used when you published your ad.

How to publish back a deleted ad on the website?

If you have erroneously deleted your ad, you can re-publish it on the site.
Create your account (with the exact same email address as the one used to publish your ad) or sign-in to your existing account.
At the top of the home page, click on your e-mail address, and using the menu, choose "Ads".
You will find your ad in the list. Click the "Re-publish" link in front of the corresponding ad.

I lost several dogs at the same time

On lost-dog.org, it is not possible to publish multiple ads for the same animal.

If you have lost several dogs at the same time, it is still possible to publish as many ads as dogs but you must follow the following process:
1) create your user account
2) send an e-mail to moderators to explain the situation
3) Once the moderators' response has been received, you will be able to publish the ads

My ad has been deleted

An ad can be deleted by its publisher, a moderator, the site administrator or automatically by the website itself. The following ads are deleted:
- the ad does not deal with the loss or discovery of a dog
- the ad is about several dogs and not just one
- the ad has been published several times
- the ad is inactive (more info)
- the publisher's e-mail address is incorrect
In some situations, you can re-publish the ad yourself.

Hidden phone number

On the ad page of lost dogs, the publisher's phone number is not immediately displayed. To see the number, click on the provided link. In addition, you can only display numbers from 5 ads per day. Indeed, some people try to use the distress of owners of dogs offering "dubious" services. In order to limit the nuisance which this entails without however blocking the searches, this limitation has been put in place. Note that anyone can still post messages in the comments area, only the visibility of the phone is limited. Once you have seen the phone number a first time, you can then display it as often as you like without limit.
This measure applies only to ads of lost dogs and not on ads of found dogs (there is less risk for this type of ad).

How to print an ad?

Once your ad is published, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. This e-mail contains a link to your poster in PDF format. See also the dedicated article on posters.
In addition, people who have a user account will also find their poster in their personal account.

How does the map work?

The map is smart:
- On the page of a lost dog ad, the red marker shows where the dog was lost. The green markers are dogs found nearby after the date of loss of the dog in the ad.
- On the page of a found dog ad, the green marker indicates where the dog was discovered. The red markers are dogs lost nearby before the discovery date of the dog in the ad.
The map also takes into account males and females. If a male is lost, it will show the males found. And vice versa.

The ad's publisher does not answer to messages

You can contact the publisher in two ways: by phone or by message (How to send a message?) Sometimes the publisher does not answer the phone, or he has not published his phone number.
Sometimes the publisher does not answer to messages on his ad page. However, every time you post a message on the ad page, it immediately and automatically receives an e-mail inviting him to read the message. The administrator and the moderators do not have more resources than you to contact this publisher. Unfortunately they can not help you anymore in this situation.

I want to send a message

On the ad page, a form at the bottom of the page allows you to post a message. It is not necessary to have a user account to post a message unless you have already posted more than 20 messages (in this case click here to create your account).
Once posted, your message will be displayed publicly on the ad page and the publisher of the ad will receive an email alert to notify him of the new message.
All others who have also participated in the discussion will also receive an e-mail to invite them to read the new message.

If you are the ad publisher, be sure to use the exact same email address used when publishing your ad. By doing do, you will be recognized as the publisher of this ad and it will be displayed next to your message and the discussion will be more clear for users.

If you want to contact a specific user of the site, you must post your message on an ad where the user has participated. There is no private messaging between users on the site.

I want to send a private message

To exhange private messages, both users must have an account.

To send your message, click on the recipient's login (blue link). The profil page of this user is then displayed and allows you to post your message.

My message is not displayed

A message is not saved if you forget to type in a login and an e-mail address. Similarly, it is not registered if it contains prohibited words or website URLs. Be careful to follow these rules! If you attempt to bypass the forbidden words filter, you will be prohibited from posting on the site.

My message has been deleted

A message can be deleted at the request of the user who posted the message or as a result of the action of a moderator in case of non respect of the publication rules. Do not confuse deleted messages with hidden messages (see below).

Votes on messages

For users who have an account on the site, there are two small icons on the messages published on the site. A thumb up and a thumb down (you need to be logged into your account to see them appear).

By clicking on the thumb up, you indicate that you like this message. You find it interesting, wise, helpful to the publisher of the ad, that it is constructive in the discussion. This is a positive vote.
By clicking on the thumb down, you indicate that you do not like this message. You find that it is spam, that it is useless, that it is negative or insulting. This is a negative vote.

Of course, you can not vote for your own messages and you can vote only once for the each message.

If a message receives several negative votes, message is automatically hidden from the discussion.

My message has been hidden

A message can be hidden following votes form other users of the site.

Keywords in messages

When writing a message, you can enter special keywords that will be automatically replaced by links. For example, by entering an ad number in between brackets, this will turn it into a link to this ad. Below is the list of authorized keywords:
- (1234): link to ad #1234
- (compare #1234): compare the current ad with ad #1234
- (@webmaster): link to the profile page of "webmaster"
- (help): link to this "help" page
- (lost guide): link to the guide for lost dogs
- (found guide): link to the guide for found dogs
- (help #lost): link to this "help" page, chapter "lost". To know the name of a chapter, click on the link that interests you at the top of this page and see what appears in your browser's address bar.

Beware of scammers!

Following the loss of your dog, you may be contacted by a scammer! It will claim to have found your dog, often wounded (sometimes even brought back abroad). He will offer to return it to you if you refund him for the costs of vets or customs. You may be asked to call a foreign phone number. All this in very rough English. Do not follow up, this is most likely a scammer!
On lost-dog.org we do not display your e-mail address to precisely avoid this kind of practice.

I want to update my alert subscription

Every time you receive an e-mail from the site, a link at the bottom of this e-mail allows you to update your subscription.

I want to unsubscribe from alerts

Every time you receive an e-mail from the site, a link at the bottom of this e-mail allows you to unsubscribe.

What are options for email alerts?

When you subscribe to e-mail alerts, you must select a geographical area (country + one or more regions). You can then filter the ads in order to receive an e-mail only when a dog is lost, found or both. You can also decide to only receive ads from males, females or both.

It is not currently possible to filter the e-mail alerts on color, race, or any other criterion. Indeed, unlike the other options, these criteria are not always correctly indicated by the publisher of the ads. You remain free to do your own search on the site with all the criteria of your choice. The e-mail alerts remain deliberately a bit blurry so as not to make you miss an interesting track.

Moreover, note that these alerts are of course sent automatically by the site without prior human control. This is to alert you as soon as possible.

Finally, note that following the publication of an ad on the site, you are automatically subscribed to e-mail alerts based on the options of your ad.

Why a user account?

It is not necessary to have a user account to publish an ad or subscribe to email alerts. To do this, only an e-mail address is necessary. The user account becomes necessary only if you publish more than 20 messages on ads or if you want to take advantage of additional features.

With a user account, once signed in to your account, you no longer need to indicate you email address and login for each message.

Create an account

It is not necessary to have a user account to publish an ad or subscribe to email alerts. To do this, only an e-mail address is necessary. The user account becomes necessary only if you publish more than 20 messages on ads or if you want to take advantage of additional features. Therefore, even if you have published an ad or subscribed to email alerts, you do not necessarily have a user account (e-mail + password).

Click this link to create your account. Then enter your usual e-mail address and choose a login (what are the rules of the login?). You will then receive an e-mail containing a link, you must click on this link to complete your registration. If you do not receive this email, look in your spam/junk mail folder, it's surely there (consider adding hello@lost-dog.org to your contacts to avoid missing other important messages).

Choose a login

The login associated with your user account can only contain letters from a to z and numbers from 0 to 9. It is not possible to use characters such as . ; - _ It is not possible to use capital letters or accents. These rules may seem very strict or unnecessary. However, they are in place for several reasons: 1) avoid confusions between people with logins too similar (only the login webmaster is possible and not WebMaster, web-master ...) 2) it allows to indicate a login in a simple way. You can indeed write (@name) in a message and a link will be automatically added to the profile page of that person. In the future, an e-mail will notify this person that it was mentioned in a message. Convenient !

Sign in

At the top left of each page of the site there is a "sign-in" link. Click here to sign in to your account. You will have to enter your e-mail address (not your login) and your password.

If the "sign-in" link does not appear, but it is your e-mail address instead, then it means that you are already sigin-in and you have nothing to do.

If you share your computer with others, it may be important to sign out of your account and prevent another person from posting messages on your behalf. Follow the instructions below.

Sign out

If you are signed in to your account, then your e-mail address appears at the top left of each page. Click on your e-mail address then in the menu, choose "sign out".
On your next visit, you will need to sign in again. See instructions above.

I do not receive emails from the website

If you do not receive e-mails from the site:
- you did not wait long enough. It may take a few hours before receiving the message
- you used another e-mail address
- e-mails arrive in your spam/junk folder. Add hello@lost-dog.org to your address book and then select the messages in question and indicate that it is not spam
- you made an error in the spelling of your e-mail address
- you indicated in the past that an e-mail from the site was spam. This causes your ads to be deleted, you are also unsubscribed from email alerts and you will no longer receive notifications of new messages on ads.

I do not want to receive emails anymore

You receive e-mails from the site for 3 reasons:
- you have published an ad
- you have subscribed to email alerts
- you posted a message on an ad
In each message sent by the site, a link allows you to unsubscribe.

Invalid email

When an ad is registered, the publisher of the ad indicates his/her e-mail address. This address is very important because it is only thanks to this address that the publisher will be able to update or delete its ad. Moreover, it is via this e-mail address that he will be informed of the new messages on his ad. However, sometimes the publisher saved a wrong address. It also happens that he indicated later that an e-mail from the site is spam. Its mailbox can also be full or there is a technical problem at its provider. For all these reasons, because the publisher cannot be contacted, his ad is automatically deleted. To avoid this, please register hello@lost-dog.org in your address book.
Note, once the email address is declared in error, the user can no longer post on the site. To unblock its email address, it must contact the webmaster.

I want to publish a testimonial

Click here to send your testimonial.

The identification of a dog (by tattoo or microchip) is mandatory. In the absence of such identification, a dog is deemed to belong to anyone. An animal welfare association, a shelter, a pound... can adopt it after only 10 days. Similarly, any individual can take and keep the dog.

More questions

Contact me

You can not find the answer to your question in the help topics, you can contact me.