One Tuesday in September when Columbus resident Consquella Townsel couldn’t find “Zeus,” her 3-month-old pitbull, she thought at first he must be hiding in her home.

The backyard where Townsel’s daughter had let the puppy out to play was fenced in, so Zeus could not have run off. Townsel and her daughter searched the house; they searched outside; they walked the neighborhood. Two hours later, Townsel’s mother joined the search.

Zeus, though, was still missing.

The next day, Townsel printed flyers and hung them in veterinarian offices, local businesses and the Columbus-Lowndes Humane Society. At Animal Medical Clinic, Amy Bailey, an animal health care specialist with 26 years of experience, suggested Townsel put Zeus’ picture on PETS Lost & Found-Columbus, Mississippi, a Facebook page with more than 2,900 members dedicated to finding lost animals in the Golden Triangle.

Zeus is “over friendly,” according to Townsel, who described him as hyper and playful. He is mostly white with black splotches, and he has one blue eye and one brown eye.

Luckily for Townsel and Zeus, Judith Carpenter spotted the post while browsing the page. An animal lover herself, Carpenter frequents PETS and similar pages to help find missing animals, especially the ones she thinks may have been stolen.

After seeing Zeus on the PETS page, Carpenter was browsing another Facebook page, Lowndes County Swap Shop, when she came across a post advertising a 3-month-old Pitbull puppy for sale for $125.

“I immediately said, ‘That’s her dog’,” Carpenter said.

She recognized the markings and noticed the seller said the puppy had two different color eyes.

Carpenter called Townsel, who happened to be at the Columbus Police Department reporting Zeus stolen at the time she got the call. Townsel put Carpenter on speaker phone and they, along with the police, made a plan to get Zeus home.

Carpenter reached out to the seller, pretending to be a buyer. She arranged to meet him at 3 p.m. that day at a Highway 69 convenience store. She waited in the parking lot of the vet clinic on Idlewild Road and texted the police when she saw him arrive.

She waited until the police let her know they were close before getting out of her truck to meet the seller. She made small talk with him to buy some more time.

When the seller handed Carpenter the dog, Carpenter backed away. The police made their way over to talk to the seller about where he had found the dog. Capt. Brent Swan of the Columbus Police Department said the seller was later released and he has not been arrested.

Meanwhile, Carpenter had a call to make.

“I called (Townsel) and I said, ‘I have your baby and I’m loving on him right now and I won’t let go of him until you get here’,” Carpenter said.

About 30 minutes later, Zeus was back in Townsel’s arms.

Townsel is also now a proud member of the PETS Lost & Found page.

‘A great tool’

Lynn Sanders, who lives just outside Columbus, started the page a few years ago after a friend’s dog went missing. Sanders, who had once lost her own dog, a Pomeranian named Pultzer, for four days, understood the frustration of trying to find a missing animal. It came to her that a great way to let people know the dog was missing was to post it on Facebook. Thus, PETS Lost & Found-Columbus, Mississippi was founded in 2011.

“I know how it felt and I knew how hard it was to get communication to so many different people in a large area, a town and surrounding cities,” Sanders said. “I just felt it would be a great tool. I had no idea it would take off.”

Within 17 hours after the first pet’s picture was put on the page, the black lab was found at a local Texaco.

The group began slowly at first, with people gradually joining, and then it picked up steam. The group has garnered attention from pet owners and people looking for animals as far away as Tennessee.

Sanders gives the credit for the page’s success to other administrators who monitor the page, making sure that users only post about lost animals, rather than animals up for sale.

Posts appear on the page several times a day, with pictures of animals lost, found or spotted in public. In the comments, users update each other on strays that have been sighted in certain areas, tip off owners whose animals have gone missing or offer prayers and words of comfort to people still looking for their pets.

Bailey says the key to finding missing pet is to get the animal’s picture on social media as soon as absolutely possible, right after talking to neighbors to make sure they haven’t seen them.

And it seems to have worked for a lot of animals, including Zeus. The page stays busy, mostly with photos of animals found roaming neighborhood streets and highways. Often, an animal has run away, and a good Samaritan keeps it until the animal’s picture has been shared so much on social media that the owner finds them. Other users on the page offer to drive through areas where a pet has gone missing or take animals by the pound where it’s more likely a searching owner has taken pictures.

“It’s amazing how the community works in the background to help animals that people are unaware of,” Sanders said.