For a pet owner, there are few more dreaded feelings than the shock of discovering your animal companion is missing. Panicked, you walk the streets, calling till you’re hoarse and it’s too dark to see. You talk to every neighbor you can find. You drive around on the surrounding streets, calling out the window, then drive the nearby freeway in dread of seeing a lifeless lump of familiar fur by the side of the road.
You put up signs, you call the pound and the thirty or so rescue organizations in the Bay Area. You envision unspeakable things about the dear creature who was in your lap just a few hours ago.
Isn’t there someone who can offer real help? As a matter of fact, there is. Her name is Kat Albrecht. A former police officer, she has dedicated her life to reuniting people with their lost pets.
I first learned about Kat when I heard her being interviewed on NPR about six years ago. It seems that just as she had been put on disability for a back injury that made her, at least temporarily, unfit for police work, her trained bloodhound went missing. Frantic, she used a friend’s sniff-trained dog to find him. In a flash of insight, Kat realized that she had more knowledge about finding lost pets than most people do, and that her true life’s work had just been revealed to her.
After working privately for several years as a pet detective, she wrote a book, The Lost Pet Chronicles, to share her experiences and knowledge more widely. She then developed a nonprofit organization, the Missing Pet Partnership, dedicated to training people and their dogs to do this important work.
All of her experience and expertise is now available at www.missingpetpartnership.org. The site is well-designed and easy to navigate. There is so much information at your fingertips there, so I suggest you spend some time exploring. Here’s a quick rundown of some items you shouldn’t miss:
- If you’ve lost or found a pet, read everything under the Recovery Tips tab. It’s easy to select the subcategories related to your focus: dogs, cats, etc.
- If you need help from a search and rescue expert with a trained dog, go to Find a Pet Detective/National Registry.
- If you’re curious about this work in general, get the whole story by watching the videos linked on the Home page.
- For the real life drama of this work, check the FaceBook page link, the blog link on the home page, and then click through to Testimonials.
- For concise tidbits on the scope of this work, go to the FAQ page link on the home page.
Kat and her organization are based in the Seattle area, but her graduates work throughout the United States, with an emerging presence in Europe. If you are inspired to join up, the website provides full details on the training. From my own experience I can tell you: dogs love the work, and it’s a wonderful feeling to help reunite a panicked owner with an equally distraught pet.
In a former life, Jane Sokolow worked for 20 years as a technical writer for local high tech companies. After retirement, she spent two years doing Missing Animal Response (MAR) training with her dog Bailey, which instilled in her a deep admiration for Kat and all the people who do this intense and rewarding work. Currently, Jane and Bailey keep their noses keen practicing the new AKC sport Nose Work.
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