Lost Dog Awareness Day - April 23, 2025

We all had that best friend as a kid, that floppy eared ball of fur who was always excited to see us, no matter what our day had been like. They asked nothing from us but a pile of cuddles and scruff of the ear, and maybe the last bit of our sandwich. Sometimes these furry family members would go out into the world on a grand adventure, always intending to return home but never quite able to find their way. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an organization who stood to help these stalwart companions find their way home? Lost Dog Awareness Day was organized by just such a group, and is a day dedicated to helping our furbaby’s find their way home.

History of Lost Dog Awareness Day

All too often, when someone finds a lost and wandering dog along the street, they assume that this dog is a stray, and has no home. Lost Dogs of America (LDOA) was formed to help prove this assumption wrong, and help those wayward mutts find their way back to their owners and friends. The organization was established in 2011, and in 2013 established Lost Dog Awareness Day. Over those years they have helped 42,000 dogs find their way back to their loving homes.

One of their success stories is a dog by the name of Molly who wandered away from her home in Illinois. Thanks to a flurry of postings across a series of Facebook groups, Molly was quickly identified when the person who found her took her to be scanned for a microchip. While Molly didn’t have one, the vet noticed Molly’s image on Lost Dogs Illinois, and was returned home within just a couple of hours of being posted as lost. That’s the kind of magi LDOA and Lost Dog Awareness Day can work in the lives of dogs and dog owners alike.

How to celebrate Lost Dog Awareness Day

Start off by upping your furry friends chances of coming home, take them to a vet and get the microchipped. Then make sure you have plenty of recent photos of your fluff-ball (We know, we can hear your Facebook friends list groaning “MORE pictures? Ahhh!”) just to make sure you have a lot of recent images of them to help others identify them. Lastly but not leastly, get yourself on the LDOA lists on Facebook to tie yourself into a network of people who work together to get their lost dogs home. Maybe you’ve seen one of them, or maybe one day they’ll see yours. Lost Dog Awareness Day is your chance to make a difference in the lives of our furry four footed family.