Don't Use PEE to Attract a Lost Pet!
Seriously! There are more effective ways to recover a missing pet...
NOTE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED: This story is also available as an audio recording, read by Kat, the author.
Pet owners are often desperate for sensible measures they can take to help them recover a lost pet. Unfortunately, some pretty silly techniques have evolved in the past several years - one of them being the suggestion that the pet owner should spray their own urine around their neighborhood as a “scent lure,” as a means to attract their lost dog (or cat) back home.
This technique of spraying urine is not only a potential health hazard and source of disease transmission, is unnecessary and is ineffective. I, as well as my network of lost pet industry professionals (Missing Animal Response Network), discourage the practice of spraying human urine as a means to attract a lost pet for six different reasons (seven, if you count the fact that your neighbors may call the cops on you or ban you from Nextdoor should they discover just what you’re spraying on their sidewalk):
#1 The spraying of human urine technique has been suggested for both lost dogs and cats, as if these species would react to this scent in the same way. Dogs and cats are like apples and oranges—they behave differently when lost. Some dogs, depending on their temperament will respond to people (and scent luring) when lost, but most cats will not - they will hide when afraid.
#2 There is no scientific basis or research (nor any anecdotal evidence) into the validity of this technique. In fact, the pee-in-a-bottle technique just does not make sense in terms of scent dispersal. It is unnecessary to spray your urine scent in the area because, if you are walking around in search of your lost dog (or cat), your scent is already being “deposited” in the area! When you walk anywhere, you end up depositing your scent through the shedding of skin cells coming off your body and the shedding of cells from your lungs. That is why bloodhounds and other SAR dogs are able to find people...because the human scent is deposited when you walk. Lost people don’t need to pee in the woods in order for a SAR dog to find them!
#3 The third reason we do not advocate spraying your urine in an area is that many dogs escape and are not going to even CARE whether their owner’s scent is present. This, of course, depends on the dog’s temperament and the reason for the escape. When fear is present in a skittish dog or cat, the area of the brain that processes olfactory cues just does not function.
#4 The fourth flaw in the suggestion to spray your urine in your neighborhood is it does not even take into account the logistical difficulty of dispersing a scent in the correct direction. If you were to attempt this technique, which direction would you spray in if your dog is missing? And how far away would you expand your spray trails? How much time would it take to produce enough urine to spray an entire neighborhood?
#5 The fifth flaw with the pee-in-a-bottle method is that it gives false hope that your dog (or cat) is just wandering around loose, sniffing around for your scent. In reality, it is more probable that your dog has been picked up by someone who will dictate what will happen to your dog. And if you’ve lost a cat, it is more probable that your cat is either trapped within his territory, hiding nearby in fear (if displaced or beat up in a cat fight by another cat), or in was transported out of the area. I should add that we DO recommend “scent luring” for missing dogs and cats when we set up what are called “feeding stations.” This is where we might coach a dog owner whose dog ran into the woods to go there and BBQ some boneless chicken and sit down and let that scent float in the area and attract the dog to come back. Or we might use a spray bottle filled with water and liquid smoke to spray and saturate an area with food smells as we place a plate of dog food down (with a game camera pointed at it) to attract the dog to stay in that area. We do this also for cats when we spray a mix of water and tuna juice to attract and keep them in an area so we can then use a humane trap to capture them and return them home. This type of scent luring appeals to the pet’s growing hunger and is reaching a different part of the animals brain that urine scent does. So scent luring itself isn’t bad—but human-pee-luring is.
#6 The sixth and final reason that peeing into a bottle and spraying it everywhere is that it is SUPER GROSS and it is A HEALTH HAZARD! Several diseases can be spread through contact with urine such as SARS, Ebola, Coronavirus, norovirus, and poliovirus.
Recently, we heard of a case where a dog owner who’d lost their dog read about the “pee-in-the-bottle” technique to spray scent trails for her dog (from some other nutcase, NOT from MY website!). She had a spray bottle on her kitchen counter filled with her urine while she was out frantically searching for her lost dog. When her close friend came by to “help” with household duties, the friend thought the yellow liquid in the bottle was a cleaning solution. Yup. She sprayed urine and rubbed it all over the counter tops! True story.
I should also mention that many lost pet websites, Facebook groups, and memes recommend that if your cat is lost that you put a dirty cat litter box on your porch to help attract your cat to come back home. Several of the flaws listed in the “Pee-in-a-Bottle” technique listed above also apply to the dirty cat litter tip. Putting a dirty litterbox on your porch is a passive approach to recovering a lost cat! Cat owners would have a higher chance of recovering their missing cat by conducting an aggressive, physical search of their yard and their neighbor’s yards or by setting up game cameras with food in their neighborhood.
Back in 2018, someone forwarded an email to me that they received from a, let’s call her a “competitor” of mine. Yeah, that’s the nicest thing I can say about her. This woman wrote about how the pee in the bottle was supposedly something that I started! SO NOT TRUE! But she said, and I quote:
“This spraying pee is a Kat Albrecht, MAR Technician, trick that is ridiculous and disgusting and extremely unprofessional in the SAR world.”
While the “ridiculous and disgusting and extremely unprofessional” statement is true, saying that the pee-in-a-bottle technique is a “trick” that came from ME is a blatant LIE! This woman never bothered to take my training course. If she had, she’d have learned what I teach my students (which is what’s in this article) and the science behind the behavior-based lost pet recovery techniques that I (and my network of volunteers and professionals) have developed over the years. I just wanted to be clear about this, in case you’ve heard the rumor that I started this whole urine revolution. Let me just end by saying that spreading unfounded rumors like that just serve to PISS ME OFF (pun fully intended)!
To read the full version of this article and other sensible, non-nut-case-behavior-based tips on how to recover a missing dog or cat, visit the Missing Animal Response Network’s LOST PET HELP page.