Support

Help fund the next search

Pet Search Canada does not run searches. We put money behind the people who do — the volunteer teams, the professional searchers, and the veterinary bill waiting at the end of it.

Where the money goes

This site is a reference. We write the guides, keep the directory, and publish stray hold times. We do not own drones, run scent dogs, or knock on doors at two in the morning.

The people who do that work are stretched thin. Volunteer search teams run on their own fuel money and borrowed equipment. Professional searchers are small businesses that get calls every week from families who cannot pay, and who often say yes anyway, out of their own pocket.

The fund sits behind both of them. What you contribute is passed on to a search organisation or applied to a veterinary bill, less what the payment processor takes on the way through. It does not stay here.

What has actually gone out

When a contribution is passed on, the disbursement gets a row below — date, amount, recipient, and what it paid for.

No grants have been published yet. When contributions are passed on, every disbursement gets a row here.

What it pays for

Three kinds of cost, all of them the sort that quietly decide whether a search happens at all.

01
Costs for volunteer teams
Fuel, trail cameras, humane traps, thermal batteries, printing. Small amounts on their own, but they are what decides whether a team can take one more call this week.
02
Searches the owner is not billed for
Some cases need equipment and experience a volunteer group does not have. We work with professional search companies so those cases can be taken on at no cost to the family.
03
Veterinary care afterwards
A pet that has been gone a week rarely comes back in good shape. We contribute toward that bill so that finding them is not the start of a second crisis.

What we are, and what we are not

We are not a registered charity.: Pet Search Canada is not registered with the Canada Revenue Agency as a charity. We cannot issue tax receipts, and your contribution is not tax-deductible. If a receipt matters to you, give directly to a registered charity instead — there are several in the directory, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
A contribution is a gift, not a purchase.: It does not buy a search, hold a place in a queue, or entitle anyone to services. If your pet is missing right now, start with the checklist. That is free, and it always will be.
The money goes to other organisations.: We are a pass-through. Funds are granted to search organisations and applied to veterinary bills. Some of those organisations are registered non-profits and some are for-profit businesses. We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume otherwise.
We cannot promise where it lands.: There is no guarantee a contribution will be spent in your province, on your species, or within any particular timeframe. It goes where the need turns up.

How we keep this clean

Handing money to organisations we also write about is an obvious conflict of interest. Here is how it is handled.

Nobody pays to appear in the directory, and nobody ever has.
Whether an organisation receives money from the fund has no bearing on whether it is listed, or where it appears.
We take no referral fee, placement fee or commission from any organisation we fund.
We do not run searches ourselves, so the fund is never paying for our own work.

If you think any of that has slipped, tell us.

Before you give

The questions people actually ask, answered the way we would answer them on the phone.

No. Pet Search Canada is not a registered charity, so we cannot issue tax receipts and nothing you give here can be claimed on a return.

Because they are often the ones with the thermal drone and ten years of experience. Paying a professional to take a case a family cannot afford puts a better search in the field than the same money spread thin elsewhere. We would rather be upfront about that than route everything through non-profits for appearances.

No. The fund is pooled. Earmarking money for a single animal means somebody has to decide what happens to the leftovers, and it makes the fund slower at exactly the moment speed matters most.

Registration takes time and money, and at this size both would come out of the same pot as the searches. If that calculation changes, this page will say so.

Yes. Search organisations and veterinary clinics can get in touch through the form on the About page.

Put something behind the next search

Most of what this fund pays for costs less than a tank of gas. It is the difference between a team saying yes to one more call and having to say no. Give what you can below, or get in touch first if you would rather ask a question.

Give now See who does the searching

Pet Search Canada is not a registered charity. Contributions are not tax-deductible, no tax receipts are issued, and funds are granted on to independent search organisations and veterinary providers rather than spent by us.