SHERMAN – Days after a fire destroyed apartments in Sherman, Jim Young climbed through debris with his specially trained K-9 "Maggie," shouting occasional orders as the dog sniffed the rubble.
“Look over here,” he demanded as he pointed to a small opening in the charred ruins of a Sherman apartment building. “Go!”
While everyone made it out of the fire that broke out Monday morning, destroying several apartments, Young and Maggie searched not for a missing person, but a missing pet.
“This is a true-life, breathing thing you have bonded with,” said Linda Monson, the missing cat’s owner, through tears.
Her family hired Young’s employer, Dog-Gone Detectives, to find her 10-year-old cat "Sassy." Monson and her mother barely escaped the fire, but were unable to grab the shy, long-haired feline. Monson has prayed her beloved Sassy may still be alive, trapped somewhere in the ruins.
“There was hope,” she said. “I didn’t want to give up until I knew for sure. How do you walk away?”
In almost every way, the pet industry has been growing along with American’s love for their four-legged friends. Now, there are even pet detectives charged with bringing home your lost Fido.
While working for a Dallas-area search and rescue team, Kat Manning noticed people also wanted help finding missing pets. She had been using specially trained K-9s to search for missing children or wandering senior citizens, but she realized she could also use them to help distraught pet owners.
“I had to quit the search team because I got so busy looking for pets,” Manning said.
Seven years ago, Manning formed Dog-Gone Detectives and began charging $350 to help families find wandering pets, frequently dogs or cats that simply ran away. She said she's had to retrain the K-9s to seek animals rather than humans.
Young joined the operation about a year ago, and together they claim a 70 percent success rate.
“We usually try to search for three hours,” said Young, adding he’ll often walk for miles following a wayward dog’s trail.
The investigation typically begins much like the hunt for a missing person, with a whiff of an item, perhaps a toy or a blanket. From there, the team literally follows the dog’s nose. Sometimes they track down the animal, other times the trail goes cold. In those cases, Young said it at least narrows down the search, allowing pet owners to target where to hang missing signs.
“Ninety percent of the time they’re looking in the wrong direction,” Young said.
The company even got credit for helping find a runaway Fort Worth police dog in 2009. When officers realized “Loki” had escaped from his handler’s backyard, the department launched a massive hunt using patrol officers and its helicopter. Yet, not until Manning showed up with her Labrador was Loki found hiding in a field a few blocks away.
Even with such success stories, though, Manning is careful to caution clients.
“I tell them this isn’t foolproof,” she said. “This is an art, not science, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get your dog back.”
At the burned apartment complex, Young delivered grim news to Monson. The dogs indicated Sassy is likely in the rubble, but no longer alive.
“The only area Maggie showed interest in was the place that was burnt the most,” Young reported.
Still the news brought some comfort to Monson, who at least now has some answers.
“It isn’t what somebody told me; it’s what the dogs have been trained to do,” she said. “I’ll have to let it go."
E-mail jbetz@wfaa.com
