When your pet goes missing, call a detective

Sandy Robins • E-mail

It was around midnight late last year when Gayle Mousis of Los Angeles noticed her house seemed unusually quiet and empty. Her son John was away on vacation and his Siberian Husky named Nashwan, his best friend and soul mate, was nowhere in sight.

Workmen had left the front gate to the house wide open that day and the dog had escaped.

Twenty-four hours later, a panicked Mousis called L.A. pet detective Landa Coldiron and her sidekick, a search-and-rescue bloodhound named Ellie Mae, of the Lost Pet Detection Agency.

Picking up Nashwan’s scent from his bedding, the team followed the runaway canine's trail to a coffee shop on trendy Melrose Avenue. Coldiron put up a poster at the coffee shop, not realizing that a friendly couple had already spotted Nashwan and taken him to their home.

When the couple returned to the coffee shop to put up a "Found Dog" notice, they saw Coldiron's poster. Three days later, Nashwan was reunited with his overjoyed family.

“By using Ellie Mae to track, I was able to search in the right direction and this helped to quickly locate the dog,” explains Coldiron.

Pet detectives to the rescue
Up to 8 million animals end up in shelters, though not all of these are strays, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Of stray animals that are brought to a shelter, up to 30 percent of dogs are eventually returned to their owner, while only about 5 percent of cats make it home.

"Lost Pet" posters featuring floppy-eared mutts and promises of big rewards tell the heartbreaking story of pets who've disappeared.

Whether an animal got lost, ran away or was stolen — to the distraught owner it seems as if the pet has vanished without a trace. That's when detectives step in.

John Mousis John Mousis gets a kiss from Nashwan, his Siberian Husky. The two were reunited after a pet detective tracked the dog's scent to a nearby coffee shop.

Armed with high-tech gear and often working with a search-and-rescue-dog, this new breed of investigator is successfully reuniting scores of lost animals with their owners.

For frantic owners of a missing pet, there's a good reason to call a professional. Up to 50 percent of all unclaimed pets are euthanized, according to the Humane Society.

It's not only runaway canines that get tracked.

When Bernadette Palmer's 2-year-old cat Callie fell out of a second-story window last winter in her North Wales, Penn., apartment and disappeared into the night, Palmer was desperate.

A snowstorm had recently blanketed the city and temperatures were below freezing. After a week passed without any sign of the lost kitty, Palmer contacted Steve Hagey of Detect-A-Pet Lost Pet Services, based in Hatfield, Penn.

Using night-vision binoculars, motion-activated surveillance cameras and a bionic ear to amplify sounds thousands of feet away, Hagey spent a total of 34 nights out in the freezing cold in pursuit of Callie.

Web resources for missing animals Lostapet.org Global Pet Finder Lost Pet Detection DetectAPetUSA 7th Scent Investigations

Nearly four weeks into the search, Hagey followed a tip from a neighbor, who claimed to have seen the feline while walking his dog, and discovered a feeding station for stray cats where he spotted Callie. He set up a humane trap and patiently waited another five days until he managed to catch the starving, now filthy and flea-infested pet and return her safely to her owner.

'Leave no stone unturned'
Fees for pet detectives can vary with some charging a set rate of around $300. Others demand a daily fee of up to $1,000 per day. Telephone consultations can range from $100 to $150. Most promise to keep searching until the owner decides all reasonable hope of finding the pet is lost.

"Only in the movies do dogs like Lassie always return home. In the real world, the scenario is completely different," says Kat Albrecht, a former police bloodhound handler, the author of "The Lost Pet Chronicles" and founder of Missing Pet Partnership, based in Clovis, Calif. "Begin searching sooner rather than later. Literally leave no stone unturned."

Oklahoma-based Karen Goin, of 7^th Scent Investigations, is nationally known for tackling tough cases in which pets have been missing for six weeks or longer. Goin says she has a 60 percent to 70 percent success rate when it comes to locating lost animals.

Goin, together with her two search dogs, flew to New York to lead the search for Vivi, the missing Westminster Dog Show prize winner who bolted from her crate at Kennedy International Airport on Feb. 15.

Goin’s search dogs, Cade and Boone, picked up the scent of the missing whippet and followed her for three days over a distance of 15 miles, but Vivi was never found.

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