A Couple of Lost Cat Stories

This is Quadzilla, our first "repeat customer." Murphy, my cat detection dog, was able to find him when he escaped a couple of years ago. This time we were not so lucky. QZ's family had moved to a new house on the edge of the woods, so I guess predators may have played a role. But it was kind of a tough search because there were 3 houses under construction on QZ's street while we were working, and Murphy was pretty nervous from all the loud noise. QZ's mom pulled out all the stops to find him; she used all of our best tricks and still...no Quadzilla. Here's what I wrote to Mom now that 2 weeks have passed:

Back to Blogging

Aaagh...did I really start this blog in 2007?? That's about one million years in blog years! I have switched back and forth between a straightforward pet detective blog, personal creative blog...blog, blog, blog. So, one more time, on the advice of marketing people, I'm pushing it back in the professional direction. Apparently, search engines (especially Google) are impressed by blogs that have over 50 posts. So rather than starting from scratch, I decided to resuscitate my old blog because I'm starting with 21 posts! Bear with me!

If you are here for information on tracking dogs, pet detectives, lost dogs or lost cats, please look at the posts labeled as such. You can also visit my website or my Facebook business page

Lost Dog Ranger Home After 7 Days on the Road!

Ranger found safe after 7 days!
Ranger was another dog (along with his buddy, Sammy) who was lost in last week's storms. His little buddy was recovered safely after 5 days when he gave himself up to a nice lady about 2 miles from home.

But no one had seen Ranger. Hoping the two dogs had stayed together, Murphy and I did "scent scans" all over the neighborhood where Sammy was found, but could not find Ranger's scent there.

So we started over at the owner's home. Since Ranger had a 7-day head start on us AND we'd had torrential rains, I was worried that Murphy might not be able to connect the dots. But after much circling of the owner's neighborhood, we finally found where Ranger exited the neighborhood. He had gone the exact opposite direction from where Sammy was found. Once I felt confident that we had established a direction of travel for Ranger, we broke off the scent search and started putting huge neon posters in the direction he went. We put up about 15 posters, but it was the 2nd or 3rd poster that did the trick. We had put up 2 posters at the intersection of Dennis & Royal in Dallas, and that's exactly where Ranger was picked up that evening. Click here to see a map of our search !

The beautiful Juliette before...

In a business is like mine there is a lot of conversation with clients about "the coyote problem." In my experience, though, it's unusual to have much proof that coyotes took the pet.We were called last week on an unusual case in Dallas where the owner had awakened to see two coyotes had her cat cornered on her patio at 4 am. She tried to scare the coyotes away but ended up scaring the cat away, too, with the coyotes in hot pursuit.

She said she didn't hear any signs of struggle so had a slim hope that her cat might have gotten away from them. She was so surprised to find out that there were "coyotes right in the city." The area behind her condo was an extremely steep ravine with a creek at the bottom...huge trees, a lot of brambles and vines. To the left of her patio (the direction the three had run) were other condos and lots of good hiding places under decks, etc.

My dog Murphy was able to find one or more cats hiding under these decks, so our hopes swelled that this cat might be under there too. Alas, I felt compelled to search the ravine area before we left and within 1 minute Murphy found the remains of the beautiful cat. I wouldn't even have recognized her...I was looking for a white cat but needless to say she was hardly recognizable. Only the head and front paws remained and they were so caked with mud, I wouldn't have noticed them without the dog's help.

It was a grim find but I was glad to bring closure to a client who was the type to search for weeks and months if we hadn't gotten this evidence.When I saw the destroyed cat, I called to the client. She came down into the woods and identified the body by turning the head over so she could see the facial features. Then I took Murphy back to the car and gave him every treat I had in there, got a plastic bag and put all that was left of the cat in the bag. I took the bag up to the patio and sat there with the client for about an hour until she calmed down a bit.I think it went okay, all things considered, but I came away wondering if I'd handled it quite right...maybe I should have walked back up and explained what I found...I don't know...does anybody have a better idea?

Anyway, I was so proud of my dog...he really did his job on this one. It's hard to accept money from clients when things turn out as bad as this one did. My husband John, while I was debating about depositing the client's check, said "I'm sure the undertaker feels a little bit bad each time he digs a grave, but he collects the money just the same."

Finding M&Ms...and more Ms

Sorry about the annoying alliteration in this true tale. And it's long—sorry about that, too.

Maggie, a 9-year-old Dalmatian, escaped from a recreation area about 90 miles from home. It happened when Melissa, her owner, asked a friend to hold onto Maggie's collar while Melissa participated in a quick canoe race on the lake. Obviously, the friend didn't do a very good job of hanging onto the dog because Maggie escaped, trying to find her mom. The friend chased Maggie and then followed her in a car but lost her in alleyways on Saturday afternoon. Melissa, with the help of family and friends, had scoured the area for 24 hours with no luck. Melissa's stepmom had hired a pet detective to find a missing dog once, and she found my website http://www.lostpetspecialist.com/.

When Melissa called me for help, I recommended large fluorescent posters and a neighborhood notification system called FindToto.com. Melissa did everything I told her to. Still no Maggie.

By the time I was able to get there, Maggie had been missing for 3 days. I met up with Melissa at the point where her Dalmatian was last seen. I gave Murphy, my search dog, the scent of the missing dog from a piece of her bedding. Murphy, an Australian shepherd, is a pretty good cat detection dog, but he has always been a little wobbly on tracking and trailing lost dogs.

I mean, face it—tracking is hard. Imagine an Easter egg hunt where you are blindfolded and have to find the eggs with your nose by following the footprints of the person who hid them three days ago. Plus, Murphy is also a bit of a goof-off. One whiff of a squirrel or rabbit can distracts him to no end. You could say that my confidence was "low-ish" as Murphy raced along through the neighborhood, nose on the ground, dragging me behind him.

So, I was as surprised as anybody when the owner, who was following along, said, "Omigod...there are bloody paw prints on the sidewalk!" The prints were dry, about the right size for a Dalmation, and enough to break your heart. If these were Maggie's prints, she had run until her pads wore through.

Murphy was trailing along the adjacent shrubbery—we have no practice with tracking bloody paw prints—so he was unaware that we humans were receiving visual confirmation of the trail. I admit I was tempted to follow the visual trail rather than Murphy's nose. Every time he made a turn away from the bloody prints, I thought, "NO! NO! The prints go that way!" But then we'd cross the grass or dirt and there would be the prints again, on the next solid surface. "Okay," I said to myself, "trust your dog."

This went on for about two hours. The Texas sun was scorching and it was really getting too hot for Murphy to work much longer. We had already gotten yelled at for trespassing by an old farmer guy, so we had to go the long way around his property. Even when we were beyond his property in a heavily wooded gully, he was still yelling at me over the fence. "Little Lady!" he said. "You are gonna get ate up by chiggers down there and probably snakebit. You need to get out of there!"

Now, I hate it when people call me Little Lady, but the idea of snakes really did scare me. But I looked up at Murphy and he was pulling hard into his harness, staring straight ahead into what I was sure was a pit of vipers, probably copperheads. I decided to follow him deeper into the gully. "Well, you may have to call the paramedics then," I yelled over my shoulder to the old farmer guy. And we kept going.

No more than 20 paces farther, Murphy stopped stock still, head up. In the tall brush beyond him, expecting to see a deer, I saw one black dot on a white background, then two…Maggie. I called out to the owner, who ran to her dog. Maggie was smart enough and tired enough to let herself be caught. A very dehydrated and foot-sore Dalmatian was delivered to her friends at the nearby fire station where Melissa's dad works. It was beautiful—shiny red firetrucks, firemen in uniform, lifesavers themselves, fawning over Murphy and the Dalmatian he'd rescued. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me—dumb, I know—I missed a great photo opportunity.

During the rescue though, I hadn't missed the opportunity to yell back at the old farmer guy, "We found her! We found her down here!" Of course I had a little twang of the triumphant-I-told-you-so in my voice. And he was nice enough to admit, "Little Lady, that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

pet detective

Lost Pet Specialist

Grapevine, TX

314.369.2784

Bonnie Hale is a Missing Animal Response (MAR) Technician who lives in Grapevine TX. She and her search dog Murphy are available to search for missing pets in Texas and neighboring states. They are sometimes available for searches in more distant areas of the USA. You can email Bonnie at bonniehale@yahoo.com or call her at 314.369.2784