About ALFP

Austin Lost and Found Pets is a non-profit community service based organization dedicated to going above and beyond to reunite missing pets with their families in and around the Austin area.

A Word From Our Founding Director

MARCH 22, 2017

Hey, guys. I want to let you know something that I feel like everyone should know that belongs to this group, but I’m not sure that everyone does.

Austin Lost and Found Pets is not just a Facebook group. We are a community service organization, and we are here to physically help you. We have a separate group called the AL&FP Street Team that will assist you or anyone else that is missing a pet. If you need help searching, we will find people that live in your area – or even across town – that will come search with you for your missing pet. We will make signs for you and put them up. We will help you make posts if you’re not able to do all of the tasks yourself. Just let us know. We all know how hard this is, and we’ve been there before. That’s why we’re here to help. If you have any needs, PLEASE let us know. The Austin Lost and Found Pets Street Team has over 400 members, and we are here to help YOU.

Found a pet? We can scan it for a chip.

It has a chip, but it’s not registered? We can track down the owner of animals with unregistered chips at least 90% of the time.

Spot a loose dog? Some of our volunteers may go try to catch it.

A number of us are trained to trap dogs and cats – and we’re pretty good. If you know of a dog or cat that has been living on the streets for months, let us know. Once captured, we will do our best to make sure that that dog is fostered with someone that is accustomed to dealing with dogs like that, instead of going into the shelter, which can be really traumatic for any living thing.

And we have fosters. So if you can’t hold onto a found animal, let us know. And if you would like to foster for us, we’d LOVE to hear from you.

That is why we’re here, and I just realized tonight that we don’t advertise that a lot, until somebody’s in the middle of something and lets us know (or it’s obvious) that they need help.

I want to make sure that you guys know that we have an entire support system here to help you. That’s the whole point. I feel like we get really caught up in the rules sometimes, and I end up talking about those, when so many of y’all don’t even know what we do to really HELP.

I get asked pretty often why we need donations. It’s because we’re doing a whole helluva lot more than running a Facebook group. And we need more resources, so that we can do more to help everyone else that’s going through the terror of losing a family member. It is truly one of the worst feelings IN THE WORLD, it’s A LOT of work, and no one should have to go through it alone.

There are just too many things to do when you’re in the middle of intense grief and panic. Everybody needs a helping hand sometimes, and I know that every time that my pets have been missing, I would have given anything to know that other people were helping me. It can be the loneliest feeling in the world. And it is so hard to hang signs all by yourself.

So we are here, and we will run out in the middle of the night with you if you lose your dog at 2 in the morning, if we can. I want you to remember that, and I want you to tell other people that join, if they seem like they need help. Heck! Tell them even if it DOESN’T seem like they need help, because we all do sometimes, and when we have lost a loved one is one of the times when we need it most of all.

Thank you guys all so much for working so hard to help us get pets home. If any of you are interested in joining The AL&FP Street Team to help us help other people find their missing loved ones, please let us know. We would love to work shoulder to shoulder with you, reuniting families and mending broken hearts. ❤

Stephanie Martens
Austin Lost & Found Pets
Founding Director

Austin Lost and Found Pets is not just a Facebook group.

We are a community service organization, and we are here to physically help you.

Our Story

Founded in 2012, Austin Lost and Found Pets is the primary resource for reuniting lost and found pets with their families in Austin and the surrounding areas. We work day and night assisting members of the community who have lost or found pets to successfully get them home to safety. Although we started out as a Facebook group, we have grown into so much more over the years.

In addition to guiding members through all of the steps necessary to locate a pet or its family, which often results in almost instant resolutions, we also provide services through the AL&FP Street Team.

Losing a pet can be an incredibly frightening, lonely, anxiety-filled experience – and it can be practically impossible to do everything it takes to find them all by yourself. But, thanks to AL&FP Street Team, you don’t have to do it all alone anymore.

Although we started out as a Facebook group, we have grown into so much more over the years.

We help physically search for missing pets in Austin, Texas and the surrounding areas.

 

If a member spots a loose dog, an injured cat or a feral cat with kittens, our street team will go out to try to catch them safely and efficiently, often arriving and rescuing the animal(s) before Animal Control can arrive.

Our street team goes out to physically search for missing pets – so if you’re out of town, at work or trying to cover a large area alone, if you ask us for help, we will be out there with you, helping you cover far more area than you ever could by yourself or with just a few friends or family members assisting in your search.

In addition to physically searching for your pet, our street team creates flyers and signs, hands them out and puts them up in the area where your pet was lost, then takes them down once the missing animal has been found.

If a member spots a loose dog, an injured cat or a feral cat with kittens, our street team will go out to try to catch them safely and efficiently, often arriving and rescuing the animal(s) before Animal Control can arrive, which sometimes can take as many as three days. We have experienced trappers on our team, as well as humane traps, to aid in capturing even the most elusive cats and dogs.

At the beginning of 2016, Austin Animal Center asked to partner with us and requested that we become a nonprofit. AL&FP acted immediately, and filed for 501(c)3 status the next week.

We’re very excited about the opportunity ahead of us to grow and expand our services. But first, we need staff and an office to keep our organization running smoothly, as well as funds for supplies such as a color copier, microchip scanners, crates, humane traps, dog/cat/bird food and money for properly vetting the animals we find.

We’re very excited about the opportunity ahead of us to grow and expand our services.

2017-2018 Board of Directors

 

Rafael Gonzalez

Curtis B. Lokey

Stephanie Martens

Dr. Danielle SoRelle

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Click here to send us an email, or for more information on volunteering with ALFP.  

 

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Mending broken hearts in Austin, Texas since 2012

We are pleased and proud to have kept literally thousands of animals out of the shelter over the past five years and to have reunited countless families in our community.

Austin Lost & Found Pets looks forward to saving more pets and mending more broken hearts than ever before in 2018.

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