For pet parents, realizing that their beloved dog or cat is missing is their worst fear. Unfortunately, it happens more often than many realize: In fact, a third of pets will go missing at some point in their lifetime.

But now there's good news: Petco Love, a national nonprofit leading change for pets, is celebrating an amazing milestone, reuniting more than 250,000 lost pets with their families through Petco Love Lost!

For 25 years, Petco Love has been investing millions of dollars in partner animal welfare organizations across the country to support lifesaving initiatives — facilitating adoptions for millions of shelter pets, distributing millions of free pet vaccines to financially strained families that are facing cost barriers to pet care, and returning hundreds of thousands of lost pets back to their loved ones.

"Each of our 250,000 reunions represent hope, love and the bond between people and their pets," said Chelsea Staley, Petco Love President. "Reuniting pets isn't just in our mission, it's in our heart. Every reunion keeps a pet out of shelters and families together. This milestone highlights the growing role of technology in solving one of the most common and heartbreaking challenges pet families face."

Here's how Petco Love has been making a difference for pets and their families for the past 25 years.

Bringing pets home

Petco Love has helped reunite over 250,000 lost pets with their families through their free service, Petco Love Lost. The site is the largest free national lost pet database, and the only tool that uses AI photo-matching technology to reunite lost cats and dogs. Petco Love Lost's machine learning technology uses up to 512 visual data points to make matches between photos of lost and found pets. The model analyzes the pet's entire body, including their eye and fur color, size and even the distance between their ears.

How effective is it? Extremely. Petco Love Lost reunites a pet with their family every four minutes, leading to happy reunions across the country. Best yet, the platform is free for anyone to use — pet parents, finders of lost pets and thousands of animal shelter and rescue partners coast-to-coast.

Pet parents can be proactive now to help protect their pet. They can register their pets today on Petco Love Lost and upload their best photos while they're safe at home. Then, reporting a lost pet would take just seconds if the unthinkable happens.

If you or someone you know has lost a pet and isn't yet registered on Petco Love Lost, you can go on the site, answer questions about when and where your pet went missing, then upload one or more photos to help match your pet with reports of pets found in your area.

Creating happy homes through adoption

Petco Love also helps find loving homes for pets in partnership with Petco, and more than 4,000 partner animal welfare organizations across North America. So far, over 7.1 million pets have been adopted thanks to Petco Love.

You can watch and share heartwarming love stories of dog and cat adoptions across the country by visiting PetcoLove.org/adopt/love-stories.

Helping pets stay healthy

Access to pet vaccinations and basic veterinary care is critical — and many families face cost barriers to pet care. To keep more pets healthy and free from preventable diseases, Petco Love has distributed over 4 million free pet vaccines to partner organizations around the country for community pets.

Through all of these efforts, Petco Love harnesses the power of love to make communities and pet families closer, stronger and healthier.

Learn more or donate to support Petco Love's mission at PetcoLove.org. And register your pet now on PetcoLoveLost.org.