Lost Mode is how you tell Ask A Vet that your pet is missing. It marks your pet as lost in the app and turns their QR tag page into an active "please help me get home" profile that anyone who finds them can read.
Where to find Lost Mode
There are two ways in:
- Open the pet, go to the Safety tab, and find the Lost Mode row (Enable pet recovery alerts). Tap Report lost.
- Or tap the … menu on the pet and choose Report as lost.
Once your pet is marked as lost, the same two places show Mark found and Mark as found instead.
What changes when your pet is lost
| Where | What changes |
|---|---|
| Your pets list | Your pet's card gets a red lost badge, so you can see the status at a glance |
| Your pet's public QR tag page | The green Hi there! badge is swapped for a red I'm lost badge |
| Missing date | Ask A Vet stamps the date and time you reported them missing, and clears it again the moment you mark them found |
| Scan alerts | You get an alert every time your pet's QR tag is scanned. Scans are always saved to your pet's history, but the alert is only sent while the pet is marked as lost |
| Recovery details | The details you fill in on the report — behaviour, microchip number, allergies, medications, vet clinic, where they were last seen — become available to a finder, for whichever sections you have switched on for that tag |
What Lost Mode does not do
Please note: Reporting your pet as lost does not send a notification or an email to anyone. Not to other Ask A Vet users, not to your family members, not to shelters or vets. Lost Mode changes your pet's own profile page and switches on scan alerts for you — nothing is broadcast.
Two more things worth knowing:
- Your pet's GPS tracker behaves exactly the same in Lost Mode as it does normally. Lost Mode does not change how often the tracker reports and does not start LIVE tracking on its own — those stay under your control on the tracker map.
- There is no community map of other people's lost pets in the app.
Lost Mode works best with a QR tag
Almost everything a finder sees lives on your pet's QR tag page, so a pet with an active tag gets far more out of Lost Mode. If your pet doesn't have one yet, the app offers you one when you tap Report lost. See the QR Tag section of this help center for how to activate a tag and choose what it shows.
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