Pet Detective - Finding Lost Pets

In traditional Search and Rescue work, trained search dogs sniff out missing people following each person's distinctive scent. It is no different with lost pet detection work. Each pet has a unique smell, just like humans. Training a dog to find a lost pet is all about the nose.

"I trust my search dogs more than I do a sighting," says Oklahoma-based Karen Goin. "There’s no doubt about it, the nose knows.”

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. 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. And it's not only runaway canines that get tracked. 

Any breed of dog can be a Pet Detective. All dogs have an incredible nose compared to a human, even those breeds with squished snouts. I’ve trained many a boxer mix as Medical Alert Service dogs and they are awesome. Just like with service dogs, a Pet Detective can be any dog with the appropriate temperament. Age is no barrier either. As part of testing the games in this course, games that were created just for this course and not general scent games, I tested on my two 11 year old dogs and the 2 year old. They all were able to find a “lost” pet over several miles and hours of searching. 

The scent that a dog tracks is an unknown. It is imperceptible to the human nose or senses. We can only speculate on what it really is. Webster says: “It is an emanation from a substance that affects the sense of smell.”