Animal Welfare Professionals

When is a stray no longer a stray? If a resident calls to surrender a dog, and they claim that they found the dog (insert length of time here) ago, at what point does your organization treat the pet as an owner surrender vs a stray? a few weeks, a few months? Do you view dogs and cats differently? We are tightening up our SOP and want to include a specific time-frame to take the guess work out of it. Obviously, we want to reunite lost pets with their families, but don't want to hold pets for an unnecessary length of time. Thoughts?

its a tough question to answer, kittens and puppys will not stray . they fall in the abandoned dumped category. the condition of the animal helps decide also if its a stray hold or can go up for adoption, we generally say anything over 5 days is a give up, but scanning and their picture goes on the website within a day, so they are still being viewed by the public to be found

Personally, we don't deal much with owner surrendered animals, but I would say that you're fine as long as you follow the laws in your municipality.  Ours has laws that say after 15 (I believe) days, a stray animal obtained by a private party is no longer a stray but an owned animal.   And when it's a litter of kittens...obviously, no one 'loses' a full litter of kittens, so we don't bother there.

But if it's an adult or a single animal that was seemingly legitimately found as a stray, I would check with the surrendering party to make sure they followed applicable laws (such as reporting the animal to the proper animal control authority), and if it's past the legal hold time, it's not a stray.  Then I'd check for a microchip, just in case, but I would not hold that animal as a stray if the surrendering party had it longer than the law requires a stray to be held.  And of course the length of the hold is different for housing in a private home than at an animal control facility.  But there should be law in your area that tell you what is required.

We don't have a local ordinance that addresses found pets held by private residents. We called around to surrounding counties and got varying answers from 5 to 30 days, with most telling us "it depends". 

Well, that's no help!  What a PITA!  That puts you on shaky legal ground, unfortunately.  I think two weeks is a pretty reasonable time frame, myself, but that depends on what the finding party did to try to find a rightful owner.  If the animal was already scanned for a microchip, advertised in lost and founds, and reported to animal control, 2 weeks is definitely fair.  If they just held onto the animal for 2 weeks and didn't do a darned thing...that's a dilemma.  It does seem like it would depend.

And as far as condition of the animal goes--it's not a reliable indicator.  Coated dogs like poodles and shih tzus, etc, go from looking like they're owned to looking like they've lived on the streets for years in about 2 days, in my experience.  Similarly, a healthy, lean animal that's not used to finding food for itself can go from good condition to appearing starved in 3-4 days.