"This is the first day I've been able to speak about him and not break out in tears," Brown said recently. "Our dog is like our family."
Brown contacted John Keane, a k a Sherlock Bones, one of the country's first pet detectives. Keane limits his activity to consulting and producing fliers and other materials from his home in Washougal, Wash. He mailed fliers with Neuman's picture, his weight and other details to veterinarians, animal hospitals and rescue leagues within a 50-mile radius of where he was when he ran away.
A recent flier from pet detective Carl Washington, who said he found 85 pets last year. There are, of course, no guarantees.
|
|
"There' s nothing that I can physically do that my clients can't do just as well or better," Keane said. "But it's like looking for missing children. They have no experience in doing so."
Like Washington, Keane said the highest priority is a well-designed, visible poster. The tragedy of losing a pet, he said, "is that the owners are usually people who take great care of the animal."
He declined to elaborate on his other search methods, citing the increasingly competitive nature of the pet detective business.
The sleuths seem to employ some common strategies. Washington said an indoor cat will probably travel no farther that two blocks, an outdoor cat, six.
"But a dog can get up to 20 miles on you."
Depending on their size, dogs can get hooked in brush or fences. A creek or pond will stop some species, so Washington likes to look at aerial maps of an area to understand the topography. A dog's biggest enemy is the road.
Laura Totis searches for lost pets with her own pets, a retired search-and-rescue Rottweiler named Xena and a German shepherd named Chewy. A professional dog trainer, Totis worked on a search-and-rescue squad in Carroll County, Md., finding lost people for a decade, until she realized a huge need in her community for someone to look for pets.
Her missions take her across the Washington region. Her search dogs operate by scent, so she asks pet owners to provide clothing, a blanket or another article their pets have touched. Sometimes the owner's smell has contaminated the sample, so she resorts to the litter box.
"I'll tell them, don't touch the litter box!" she said.
The lost animal's scent can help. Totis advises the owner where to put a humane trap when her dogs recognize the animal's scent. In recent months, she has hunted for an Arlington cat she thinks went down a storm drain, a border collie lost near a golf course and a beagle that ran away in Fairfax County. None was found.
Totis said dogs tend to turn up more easily after long periods, simply because they are more social.
"Dogs look for civilization. People started seeing them in their back yards. Even with shy ones we have sightings," Totis said.
