By BILL KETTLER

GRANTS PASS -- When Sally Mason's phone rings, there's likely to be somebody with a lost dog on the other end.

Or a wandering horse, or a roaming goat, or a missing cat.

The Grants Pass woman reunites lost animals with their human companions. People call Mason with information about lost and found critters and she matches finders with the losers.

During the past year, Mason's Silver Wings Pet Finders has reconnected about three dozen lost dogs (and a couple of goats) with their humans. Poring over lost-and-found ads in local newspapers and studying the descriptions she collects from callers, she looks for characteristics that might suggest a match.

"There's a lot of detective work in it," she said. "One person's idea of what (breed) a dog is will be completely different from somebody else's."

People who lose their dogs often provide accurate descriptions, but finders may just pick a breed that sounds close. Mason uses her intuition and imagination to link different descriptions of the same animal.

"Somebody will call in and report losing something like a cocker spaniel," she said. "Somebody else will report finding something like a Lhasa apso.

"I don't use a computer," she said, "because they're too literal."

A Michigan native with a lifelong soft spot for animals, Mason was troubled by the number of lost animals she saw when she came to Grants Pass five years ago. It seemed obvious that someone ought to be bringing finders and losers together, but nobody was.

"It bothered me to the point where I figured I was the one," she said.

Mason's fondness for animals transcends her work with lost pets. Her five-acre ranch hosts a 50-animal menagerie including horses, sheep, goats, chickens, pheasants, and turkeys. All have names, and most were destined for the stewpot or the gluepot until Mason bought or begged their freedom.

She also feeds several dozen wild Canada geese who have settled on her farm pond, hoping to keep them out of hunters' gun sights.

Not surprisingly, it's been years since Mason herself tasted meat.

"I'm a strict vegetarian," she said. "I don't eat anything with a face."

Sometimes she connects finders and losers in a day or two. Teressa Bell of Grants Pass called Mason one Saturday when she realized her labrador-golden retriever cross, Chez Lee, went on a walkabout. Several people who had seen a lost golden retriever on the other side of town also called Mason, and by the following Tuesday Chez Lee was home.

"I can't believe she's as good as she is at this," said Bell. "We never thought we were going to see our dog again, and I don't think we would have if it hadn't been for her service."

Mason reunited another Grants Pass woman with her lost puppy in less than 24 hours, but there are plenty of missed connections, too. Mason fields about 30 calls a week from people who have lost pets or seen critters that look like they might be strays. And the phone traffic on her answering machine often doubles after noisy holidays such as Fourth of July and New Year's Eve, when many pets run away from home trying to flee the explosions.

Mason's luck with cats so far has been miserable -- not a single match.

"Cats are tough," she said. "They don't look lost. They walk around looking like they know where they are."

Mason doesn't charge for her service, but she accepts contributions. She started working with animals about 15 years ago, when she rescued a seagull with a broken wing. A veterinarian told her the bird would probably never fly again, but he set the broken wing, Mason nursed the bird to health, and to everyone's surprise it flew to freedom when Mason opened its cage.