Moore starts lost-pet network

The first pet Judi Moore found a home for was a Rottweiler. It happened in the first days of starting the Siesta Key lost pet hotline.

“People were kind of championing him,” Moore said of the dog.

An island resident found the dog, which Moore said was likely separated from a family of tourists. And through her network of contacts for the project, a local family adopted the dog.

Moore’s second “client” was a 30-year-old green parrot, named Pirate, whose owner called the hotline, 749-LOOK (749-5665), after the bird escaped from her property. There were a few leads about someone turning in a lost bird to a local pet store on the Facebook page she started for her lost-pet project.

“It makes me sad when I hear about people losing their dog or cat,” Moore said in a phone interview with the Pelican Press.

Moore has three dogs: Sophie and Reckless, both Bichon Frises, and Yogi, a golden retriever-bassett hound mix.

She came up with the idea for the hotline after reading about a Siesta dog that reached its owner through the communication of a network of individuals that included Siesta Key Association President Catherine Luckner.

Moore presented her idea during the December SKA meeting, after which she collected names and email addresses to add to the online network that she sends emails to once a lost pet is found or reported. There are roughly 45 names currently on that list, Moore said, and the hotline’s Facebook page has 18 “likes.”

“What I’m finding is there are a lot of people who really, really want to be involved,” Moore said.

Luckner regularly sends emails to the community when a lost pet is found, and the Siesta Key Village Association president helps organize events, the latest of which was Leis for Strays, for Sarasota in Defense of Animals.

“The goal is to get as many people on the network we can, so we can get those critters back to their families,” Moore said.