Karen Briggs’ home phone number is available to any neighbor who wants it. Her phone may ring at 3 a.m. and on holidays, but as director of her neighborhood’s Pet Watch, a program that seeks to reunite lost pets with owners, Briggs knows the inconveniences come with the territory.
“We finally had to set hours. We have a baby,” Briggs says. “But most people don’t know it’s a home.”
Briggs runs the Pet Watch program under the umbrella of Lake Highlands Crime Watch 1078. The program recently caught the eye of the SPCA, which has since printed manuals detailing how other neighborhoods can build the same program.
When neighborhood resident and Crime Watch coordinator Joyce Ferguson shipped her kids off to school three years ago, she turned her sights to improving the quality of her neighborhood. Pet Watch was her brainchild.
“I thought: Why couldn’t we manage our own pet population?” Ferguson says. “If we had the right vehicle in place, then when my pet got out, I could call a number and let the neighborhood be on the lookout.”
So in its weekly newsletter, Crime Watch asked for volunteers to head up the Pet Watch program. Briggs, a former teacher and current stay-at-home mother, was the only nibble. And she’s been “a blessing,” Ferguson says.
“Karen makes it work,” Ferguson says. “If this goes to another neighborhood, in order to be successful, they would have to have a Karen Briggs. She keeps the neighborhood educated with her emails, because you have to keep feeding people this information; it will generally not strike home until they lose a pet.”
The first year was slow for Pet Watch. Letting neighbors know about the program, not to mention motivating them to participate by taking the time to register their pets, was a slow process.
In the second year came a breakthrough: cash. A neighbor donated money for the group to print magnets. With magnets sent out in all Crime Watch newsletters, residents began to look at that thing on their fridge and think about its benefits. (If your animal escapes and animal control picks it up, the pet has as little as three days before it is euthanized.)
Today, Briggs has registered the photos and vital stars of more than 300 neighborhood pets, including five birds and two ferrets. In the past three years, Briggs and her neighbors have worked together to reunite 100 lost animals with their owners.
“There are a lot of pet owners and animal lovers in the neighborhood. Somehow, it really struck a chord,” Briggs says. “I’ve already helped start Pet Watch in Crime Watches 1076 and 1077, and my biggest piece of advice is: You can’t save them all, but you can make a difference. Just answering a phone call can reunite someone with the pet they love.”
Because of her work, Briggs has received numerous recognitions, including “Citizen of the Week” from KRLD Radio. SPCA president Warren Cox recently called Briggs the “ambassador” of the Pet Watch program.
“As Pet Watch gains recognition,” Cox says, “I feel it will serve as a model for the entire Metroplex and beyond. The entire neighborhood benefits by having a place to begin for a pet search. A pet owner can’t beat this system.”
And Briggs says her neighbors aren’t the only ones receiving a benefit from the program.
“I am pleased with what’s happened,” she says. “It’s like God opened a window…and if I can combine education and animals, and still have time for my family, then that’s ideal.”
