In 1996, Kat Albrecht was a police officer and bloodhound handler in Santa Cruz, Calif. Her dog, A.J., had been a part of many search and rescue efforts, sniffing out and locating lost people in the woods.
But when A.J. escaped Ms. Albrecht’s yard, there was no team of expert animal rescuers to turn to. So she sought help from a friend who had her own tracking dog, a golden retriever named Kea. “We knew that Kea understood, ‘Smell this pillowcase and follow the scent trail of this missing person,’” Ms. Albrecht recalled. “Would she understand, ‘Smell this stinky blanket and find my stinky bloodhound?’”
Within 20 minutes, Kea found A.J. lounging on a stranger’s porch. For Ms. Albrecht, it was a turning point. “We have all kinds of detection dogs: drug-detection, bomb-detection, termite-detection,” she said. “Why don’t we have cat-detection dogs? Why aren’t we training dogs to follow the scent trail of lost dogs?”
Ms. Albrecht decided to do just that, forging an unlikely career as a lost-pet detective. Along the way, she has worked with researchers to study the behavior of missing cats and founded the Missing Animal Response Network, which trains people to locate lost pets and assists panicked pet owners. She no longer searches for lost pets herself, but trains others to follow in her footsteps.
Ms. Albrecht spoke with The New York Times about her work. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What strategies and techniques do you use to find missing pets?
One of the most fundamental things is the analysis of lost-pet behavior. Dogs and cats are like apples and oranges. They behave differently from each other when lost.
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