It starts with a stomach-drop. You call your dog and he doesn’t come. The next hour turns into panic - photos uploaded to Facebook, posts dropped in Nextdoor and every neighborhood group within range - a fear that doesn’t ease until your furry family member is back safely at home.

Park Cities residents Jen and Zach Munoz know that feeling, and they set out to fix it. Their app, Furmiliar Faces, launched this spring as a private, hyperlocal pet registry designed specifically for neighborhoods like ours and the project has been a family affair from the start, with the Munoz boys, Cole and Jaxon, knocking on doors across Park Cities to invite neighbors in. The problem the Munoz family is addressing is more common than most pet owners realize.

According to AKC Reunite, roughly 1 in 3 pets go missing at some point in their lifetime and most of the time it isn’t dramatic. A lawn crew props the gate. A delivery driver doesn’t fully latch the door. A kid runs in from the pool and forgets to close it behind them. Park Cities is luckier than most: local police carry microchip scanners, which can get a chipped pet home in minutes. But the chip is only as good as the registration behind it. The American Veterinary Medical Association reports that roughly 40% of microchipped pets aren’t registered in an active database, and that the leading reason chipped pets don’t make it home is an out-of-date phone number on file. AVMA research found that lost dogs with current chips are returned at a rate of 52%, compared with just 22% without — and for cats the gap is even more dramatic, 38% versus less than 2%. When the chip fails, the only thing left is whether a neighbor recognizes the face on the loose.

“Park Cities is a neighborhood where people actually know their neighbors,” said Jen Munoz, who co-founded the company with her husband Zach. “They wave on walks. They remember your dog’s name. But even here, there’s a gap. When a pet slips out, the neighbors who could help have no idea who he belongs to or how to reach you.”

Furmiliar Faces closes that gap. Pet owners sign up, register their pets, and the neighborhood quietly learns who they are. If a dog ever pulls a Houdini, the people who spot him already know his name, know his family, and know how to get him home. No frantic posting. No waiting and hoping. Just a faster path back.

Here's how it works: every pet on the block gets a profile - photo, name, breed, color. Spot a loose dog and think you know who it belongs to? Filter the registry by breed and color to find them, and ping the owner directly. Don't recognize the dog? Snap a photo and trigger a stray-pet alert to nearby Furmiliar Faces households. Either way, the owner hears in seconds, not hours.

The Munoz family started Furmiliar Faces in Park Cities, and will be opening Furmiliar Faces up block by block. Households in other neighborhoods can sign up too - they’ll be the first to know when the registry reaches their street. Signing up takes about 60 seconds at www.furmiliarfaces.app and is free, always. Even households without pets are encouraged to join. Every set of eyes on the block makes the whole network stronger. For questions or to learn more, contact support@furmiliarfaces.app.