What’s The Probability That Your Pet’s In A Certain Area?

You’ll never have enough time to search an area for you pet inch by inch. You’ll need to target your energies into the areas where the missing animal is most likely to be. This is called determining a Probability of Area (POA) and is determined by various factors: 

• The type of animal that’s missing 
• The patterns of behavior in that particular species
• The environment of the animal 
• The temperament of the individual animal 
• The motivation of the animal 
• The terrain of the search area 
• The weather 

Let’s say you suspect your animal is missing in one particular yard. Try breaking the yard up into 4 equal areas. If you search one part completely, then the probability increases that the animal will be found in one of the other three parts. In simple math terms, each of the 4 areas of a yard is 25% of the total. If you search one area then the chances go up higher (33%) that the animal is in one of the other 3 areas. 

It’s rare that an area can be searched with a 100% POD. Therefore a search is forced to be undertaken in a given area at under 100%. This means that is an area is searched and the missing animal isn’t found, even with a 95% POD, there’s the possibility (5% chance) that the missing animal might have been missed or that the missing animal wasn’t in the search area to begin with. This is ok as you can now cross off your list a potential place to look!