My warning point is if you lose a dog, and you want dog back, you need to not trust shelters, or the 'shelter system' to work - you need to aggressively go find your dog. Physically go to the shelters immediately (with your appropriate posters/pictures) You have to be politely dead-set that they pay attention to you (like when you fly with a dog)
That type of employee - well intentioned, undertrained, mistake-prone - is the rule in many shelters, unfortunately, not the exception.
I work with two awesome major national breed rescues, and they try to have a shelter employee meet a designate that night, if necessary, to release the dog - not wait until morning. Because the above happens.
In my experienced, 60-75% of pups and dogs coming out of shelters are misidentified anyway by shelter employees as to color and breed types - collie mixes called shepherds, AmStaffs called pits, etc. Dogs have been put down because, "Oh, we knew you lost a yellow lab mix, but we thought that was a Golden mix we euthanized. Sorry."
Believe me, there are tons of people out there, too, that just keep stray dogs, and never even bother to look for an owner. A microchip proves ownership definitively - even years later.
There was recently a Weim stolen out of it's owners' yard as a 9-month-old (Michigan I think), found here in KY this year - and returned to the original owners, and the dog is like 6 or 7 now! Pretty awesome
