Five years? Really? Although Raphael and I have been on more than a hundred searches, and he has had a very active, fun life, it hardly seems like five years ago that I first met the puppy, abandoned in the woods with his brothers. Besides being an excellent search partner and a pleasure to be around, he is very photogenic. Even when he is making funny faces.

Today he went to Useless Bay to celebrate the five year anniversary of his capture. Although I’m not sure if I captured him or he captured me. Please enjoy these photos and videos of his grand adventure, and read the two articles below about his capture and his good work.

On Saturday, August 8th, I saw a post on Lost Dogs of King County about a dog that was hanging around a cemetery in north Seattle. The video showed her running away from someone who was trying to help her. Another post seemed to show that she had been running down busy Lake City Way a few days earlier. I knew she was just right for my skills, tools, and experience, and Tino and I grabbed a 48 inch trap and headed north. Once I arrived at the cemetery, it took me about 30 minutes to locate her. She was in the forest in the northwest corner, near an access road. I got out, and I acted as if I was there to admire the forest, and maybe I didn’t actually see her. She glanced at me, but didn’t want to move anywhere quickly. When she did move, it appeared she had pain somewhere, perhaps her paws or her joints. I tossed a few Vienna Sausages her way, but I don’t think they were close enough that she could smell them. She wandered away, and I didn’t follow. Instead, I drove around to the main part of the cemetery, and it didn’t take me long to spot her, since she was in the wide open, visible from a distance. Most of the grave markers in this cemetery were flat to the ground, giving her perfect vision of anyone approaching her, and also making her easy to spot. She was in the Birch section of the cemetery, according to the signs. She was just resting by a tree, so I knew I could take my time to observe her, and approach slowly.

Being in this cemetery, trying to help a dog that was too afraid of people to receive help, reminded me very much of catching Sky, 12 years earlier, in a cemetery in Everett. Sky is sleeping near me as I write this. Please read her whole story in the link at the end. I also spent time in the cemetery trying to catch my dog, Viktor, when he was still too cautious to let me put a leash on him. The clouds were excellent that day as I sat around with Viktor.

This girl in the Acacia cemetery, in the Birch quadrant, was just resting calmly. I wanted to set a trap, and I planned how the wind direction would best take the scent of the Vienna sausage to her. Dina, my fellow UBS volunteer, who had helped me catch Sky 12 years ago, and who has caught probably a thousand stray dogs since then, said she wasn’t working, and she could bring a second trap, to improve our odds. After observing the dog for a while, I decided it would probably be okay to drive slowly by her and toss some sausages out the window as I drove by. When people are in cars, stray dogs tend to ignore them. She did get up from her resting place on the grass, but she only took a couple of steps away, and then she came along after my car and found the sausages and ate them.

As you can see from the video, she walked tentatively, like maybe her paws or joints were sore, or maybe she was just sad about ending up in a cemetery. Seeing that she liked the sausage, and I could use it as a lure, I planned where to set the trap, relative to her new resting place, so that the light breeze out of the northwest might carry the scent to her. Dina arrived and set up her trap about 100 feet apart from mine, along the path Birch might take to get back to her safe place in the woods, if she decided to run away from me. We waited a while, and the dog seemed happy to just nap all day under her little tree. Because she seemed relaxed, and she had accepted the Vienna sausage I threw from the car, I decided to try calming signals, to see if she would come to me.

I parked Tino in the shade, and I walked slowly toward the dog. When she became aware of me, while I was still 150 feet away, I fell to the grass, lying down. Over the next forty-five minutes, I closed the distance to her by rolling across the grass of the cemetery. I would slowly roll about six feet closer, then wait, roll and wait. She lifted her head a few times, but relaxed, not too nervous about me. When I got within sausage-chucking range, I opened a new can, which got her attention. I tossed a piece of sausage, and she seemed interested, but didn’t get up to get it. I tossed another piece closer to her, and she did get up and eat it. After feeding her about half the can in this way, I stood up and walked around her and then walked slowly towards the trap, tossing bits of sausage, getting her to follow me, ten feet closer with each chunk of meat. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan my sausage to distance ratio quite right and I ran out of sausage still about 35 feet away from the trap. I went and sat on the other side of the trap, hoping she was close enough to smell it, but she just settled down for another nap.

As I sat and watched her, I noticed the crows. I had been watching them all day, groups of 3 or 4 in this little tree or in the big trees. Their numbers slowly grew until there were hundreds of them. Perhaps they had gathered to assess their numbers and share news about their home territories. They gossiped and postured. A couple of them played in the grass by rolling in front of each other, and then it occured to me that the two crows rolling on the grass may have been telling the story of the strange human trying to make friends with the stray dog. Maybe the hundreds of crows were watching the spectacle of the dog capture, marveling at the strange behavior of other species. I hope I was as entertaining to them as they were to me.

After waiting a while to see if she would get up to come check out the trap, I decided to walk around to my car to get more sausage, which I should have just brought with me in the first place. I buy six packs of Vienna sausage for catching stray dogs. I was down to two cans, which should have been enough, plus Dina had more. As I was walking around to the car, I noticed the sound of running water, which I hadn’t heard before. I followed the sound to a landscaped area of solitude, with a fountain and pond and levels of flowing, cascading water. Not only was it a nice place for a lonely dog to hang out, but also a good source of water. I had worried about the dog being dehydrated, and it was good to know she had found this water source. It was probably why she chose that corner of the cemetery.

When I returned to the dog, I just slowly walked in her direction, and then walked past her, tossing bits of sausage. She started following me immediately, and followed me right to the trap. I sat down on the far side of the trap. She was now aware of the trap, but she didn’t go in right away. She came and sat near me, to just hang out and socialize, to enjoy the nice evening in the quiet cemetery with the trees and the waterfall and the crows. I imagined she was thinking it was nice to hang out with someone who didn’t try to chase her. Eventually, I threw her more bits of sausage, closer and closer to me, until I got her to eat directly out of my hand. I was able to pet her under the chin. She settled down near the opening of the trap and took a short nap. When she woke up, I got up and dumped an entire can of sausage into the trap, to make it more enticing. Then I went and sat on the other side of the driveway, so she would feel comfortable going in the trap if she wanted. Dina texted me that she would run to Taco Bell to get a chicken burrito to make it more enticing for Birch to go in the trap, but while Dina was away, Birch decided it was finally time to go in. After circling a couple of times, she walked right in, and she wasn’t too startled when the door closed behind her. She became probably about the one-thousandth dog to be caught in that particular trap, including Tino’s mom ten years earlier. She just flopped down on the floor of the trap, resigned, and probably relieved that she didn’t have to run anymore.

When Dina returned, I fed Birch the chicken burrito through the grid of the trap, and she really liked that. It was a nice reward for going in. Dina also brought me a potato taco, which was really good. I had no idea such a thing existed. As I was eating my excellent dinner, a potato taco in a cemetery with my old friend and my new friend, I noticed that the hundreds of crows had quietly disappeared. Did they take off to go to a bigger meeting? Or back to their respective nests? Or did they leave because the show was over and the stray dog was safe? After we rested for a while, we tried to determine where we might take her. Lily Burns, Admin of Lost Dogs of King County Facebook group, found a 24 hour veterinary office, Timberline, just about a mile away, on Aurora Avenue. They said they would take her and look her over for possible injuries, the cause of her tentative walking, or dehydration. When I got her into the vet, she let them handle her easily, and they discovered she had a microchip. I was relieved, and hoped her family would pick her up soon. However, the microchip was not registered to anyone, so she eventually went to the shelter. She made friends there, and the staff reports she gets along fine with other dogs. She is now available for adoption, under the name Peach. She is a beautiful, sweet dog, and I would gladly adopt her myself, except that Sky is very opinionated and would not accept her, even though they could share their stories about how they were captured in a cemetery by a man who knew the right approach to take. I hope you will adopt Peach from the Seattle Animal Shelter and give her the good life she deserves.

1. He has an enormous head, and it often blocks what I’m trying to see. When we arrive at a location to do a search, I will look behind the passenger seat to grab his harness and put it on. His harness is black like Raven’s, so I have to look which one I’m grabbing. When I look back there, Tino also looks back behind the seat, sticking his fat head right in my line of sight, so I can’t see a thing. It might be his natural curiosity, or he could be playing a joke on me, I’m not sure which.

2. He sheds like crazy. The cup holders in the car are lined with fur. I have fur in my eyelashes, frequently. I probably have Tino fur in my brain.

3. He barks right in my face, when he is excited. He will be inches from my ear, and bark at full volume, to say, yes, we really should go on an adventure. I would be able to hear him if he spoke softly, and I would know what he wanted just by looking at his eyes, but he insists on barking as loud as he can, directly in my face. Maybe he is trying to dislodge the fur from my brain.

4. He won’t move if you want to get past him. He will lie right in the path and make you step over. Then, once you get past him, he will get up and follow to wherever I am going, to see if I might be going to the cookies.

5. He drools on the touchscreen of the car. He doesn’t drool very much, but when he does, his favorite place to drool is on the infotainment screen. Once, when we were going to a search, he drooled on the screen and ended my navigation. We were out of cell range, so I had to turn around and drive back to civilization so I could restart the navigation. I unplugged my phone from the car and navigated by phone, so he wouldn’t cancel the navigation again. Once, he drooled on the screen and sent text messages to 19 random people. I tell him, “You can drool on the dashboard, you can drool on my sleeve, you can drool on my pant leg, you can drool on Raphael, but don’t drool on the touchscreen.” He doesn’t listen.

6. He makes it hard to get out of bed. He is 100 pounds, and he and Sky have me pinned under the comforter, and wedged between them. He won’t move. I have to push the comforter toward the foot of the bed and extract my legs, and then lever myself out of the canyon between the dogs.

7. He forced me to spend more on an iPhone because I had to get maximum storage for the 100,000 pictures he makes me take of him.

8. He forced me to keep him, 10 years ago, by doing those stupid puppy head tilts with his stupid cute face.

9. He wants me to throw the ball so he can fetch it, but he won’t give me the ball so I can throw it.

10. He just looks at me and he forces me to do what he wants. He looks in my eyes, then he looks at the chew toy he wants me to get off the counter for him. He has me perfectly trained, and he is a merciless tyrant, always getting what he wants. I am his slave.

I hope you will click on the links below and read about Tino’s Adventures. All together, it is a book about Tino and me. You could, and probably should, spend the entire day reading about Tino and looking at his pictures.

Tagg, the GPS that worked, was bought by Whistle, whose trackers did not work. Eventually, I got a Whistle tracker I was happy with, until Whistle was bought by Tractive. Tractive did not work, but eventually, they produced a tracker that worked well, for a while. In March, Tractive was bought by Bending Spoons, in Milan. Now, Tractive doesn’t work either. I have used Fi collars at times in the past, until they stopped working. I believe that 14 years after I was first able to buy a reliable tracking device, it is perfectly reasonable to expect a tracking device that works. I think I am going to try Fi again, for my next tracker, although I don’t have high hopes.

People ask me, about a hundred times a year, what GPS devices do you recommend? What am I going to tell people now? GPS devices work until they don’t? I lost Viktor when I had a GPS device from Whistle, which was supposed to work, obviously, but it didn’t. I spent 7 days catching Viktor, and if you count my time and the time of all the volunteers, the value of the labor and expertise that went into catching Viktor was at least several thousand dollars. The $80 device I bought expressly to avoid that situation wasn’t just a waste of $80, it ended up costing me much more.

I don’t believe it is that difficult to make a GPS tracker that works, but no one is willing to produce one. The problem must be that a bunch of men got together in a conference room and said, “How can we take this functional, reliable product, and completely change it so that we can charge more money?” The next time someone asks me what GPS to get, I will tell them, definitely do NOT get Tractive. Or whatever they will call themselves next. Tagg/Whistle/Tractive/Bending Spoons will never again get a chance to betray me. Even if they do produce a tracker that works, which I’m sure they will eventually, they will find a way to mess it up before the subscription period expires.

For now, I guess I would recommend, get whatever GPS, I suppose it doesn’t matter which, and hope it works. Also, I would add an Apple AirTag, which has severe limitations, but has helped to find some pets. Maybe with two forms of trackers, one will have a chance of working.

Also, because we can’t rely on GPS these days, please read and follow all of these tips for loss prevention.

I’m acting like I’m on drugs or something, but I think it might just be that me knee doesn’t hurt today. When I hurt my knee on Saturday, I thought, well, that’s that. I’m going to be forced into retirement. On Sunday, it hurt worse. Yesterday, it was much better. This morning, my knee felt just like normal, as long as I avoid certain movements. I’m a long way from being able to run behind monster Valentino, but Raphael works in a different way, a methodical search instead of working a scent trail. I could definitely see myself working with Raphi, if the terrain wasn’t too extreme. I’m really hopeful I could get back to work sooner than I imagined.

I was walking up the driveway this morning, bringing the recycling bin up from the street. It was breezy, and the hazelnuts and maples were dancing above me. On the gravel driveway, sun and shadows danced in intricate moving forms. Some shadows were detailed and others abstract. The birds were singing. It was not too hot. I was really amazed at the pattern. I wondered what was going on with my brain. It was just shadows on dirt, right? Not some sort of miracle. But maybe it was a miracle and I just hadn’t been paying attention before.

We went to the dog park, and a perfect cloud raced through the blue sky towards the madrone tree. This little fluffy cloud maintained its delicate shape while it was racing across the sky. It would be out of sight in a few minutes. I managed to capture it. I noticed many other clouds that were very different but also perfect, and I wanted to spend the rest of the day just taking pictures of clouds.

A crow was sitting in a tree northeast of the dog park. He rings like a phone. I have heard him other times we have visited the park. One time I thought it really was a phone ringing until I realized it was coming from a tree. On that day, the ring was more like a typical phone from maybe the sixties, with an actual metal bell and a little hammer that was vibrated by an electromagnet. Today, the crow sounded more like a phone in a mechanic’s shop, less musical and more urgent. The ringing of the crow-phone was even paced and consistent. I went to shoot a video of the crow, but this must have made him self conscious, and he stopped and flew to anther tree.

Tino and Raven found several nice dogs to play with, and Raven persuaded several humans to throw sticks or discs for her. Tino just trotted into the middle of the field with his ball in his mouth, his head high, and his tail up, like a prancing pony. Then he walked into the middle of a group of people who were seated and talking. He walked right between them, like, “You may admire me if you wish.” And they did. They all petted him and remarked at his size, and his soft fur.

I noticed a flower in a tree, on the west side of the park. I used my phone’s camera to zoom in, and the flower looked just like a tulip. Of course, I have heard of tulip trees. I know we have one in our neighborhood because I find the leaves in the fall. I had been walking under this particular tree for years, and this was the first time I had ever seen its flowers. It was covered with them. You had to look up, though, which apparently I had not, at least not at the right time. Now I will look, in the first week of June, to see this tree blooming. This dog park used to be an elementary school before it became surplus and was torn down. I wonder how many kids went to this school for years and never saw the flowers in the tulip tree. Maybe there was a kid who looked up at the right time.

I think I have always been someone who appreciates ordinary everyday miracles, but today more than most days. I have 215,000 pictures on my iPhone, most of them of dogs. If I do a search on my phone for clouds, I get at least 5,000 pictures. A dog is a miracle that you can have for almost free. Of course, a dog is not free when he requires a $10,000 surgery, like Tino did a year ago. For the most part, though, they are giving away fantastic, amazing dogs at your local shelter right this minute. Two and a half years ago, I got a call from someone wanting to rehome a black lab puppy because they were starting to realize she was going to be more than they could handle. I told them I would help them out, and Raven has been an amazing dog. She is basically ready for search work. She is beautiful and perfect. She even has a beauty spot of a couple of white hairs on her cheek. Yes, Raven is annoying and sometimes difficult, but mostly she is amazing. I am very fortunate to have my dogs.

I hope this feeling of living in a world of wonder sticks with me beyond this day. I think I might start annoying people if I keep pointing out what a miracle ordinary life is. Water falls out of the sky and it keeps you alive. You wake up in the morning and you breathe air that the trees just gave you, without you even having to ask. I get to work with dogs who are funny and amazing and the most beautiful creatures in the world. I get to have a wolf beside me that doesn’t try to kill me. At least most of the time. There is a little wad of chewing gum in my knee joint that can carry 250 pounds or more, and it has worked perfectly for decades. It popped out while I was climbing up a ravine, but then it seemed to pop back in, without too much damage. It’s a miracle that knees work at all. They are a masterpiece of engineering.

I am going to try to hang on to this feeling of quotidian miracles. I think I would become annoying if I turned into one of those people who was perpetually happy and always looking on the bright side of things. I definitely don’t want to become that, and if you notice me looking at clouds all the time with a stupid look on my face, be sure to kick me in the knee and bring me back to reality. I have always appreciated the beauty and genius of my dogs, and I probably will continue to point that out to people, even at the risk of being annoying.

On July 26, 2014, Kelsy, Mu, and I went to search for a lost cat on Bainbridge Island. This cat was incredibly friendly with all humans and animals. Because the owners were away on vacation, the cat had escaped accidentally. When I asked if he was friendly enough to walk right up to a dog to say hello, the owners said yes, absolutely. My concern was that they lived next to prime coyote habitat; a friendly, indoor cat could easily walk right up to a coyote, not knowing the danger.

I started Mu searching first. Within twenty minutes, he led me to a spot in the woods nearby where he found a significant amount of fur that appeared to belong to the missing cat. The fur clearly wasn’t from a wild animal, and if it belonged to a different cat, it had to be one that looked remarkably similar. This evidence was not a good sign.

Next, I put Kelsy on the scent trail. She tracked from the house directly to the fur Mu had found, indicating it was indeed the missing cat’s. From there, Kelsy took me on a long, three-legged journey spanning several blocks from the cat’s home. Normally, cats do not move in this manner—traveling in a fairly straight line to Point A, then directly to Point B, and then straight to Point C. Instead, cats usually move short distances, hiding under cover to ensure it is safe before moving a little farther. A scent trail that covers a long distance in relatively straight paths suggests the cat may have been carried by a predator. This was further evidence that the cat likely did not survive.

I had one more test to see if this was truly the result of a coyote attack. In my car, I had a Luminol kit, which I brought specifically to check for blood. Luminol is a chemical compound that binds with iron and glows blue in its presence; it is widely used to detect blood because it reacts with the iron in hemoglobin. However, Luminol is only effective in complete darkness. Because it was midafternoon and Bainbridge Island is a long drive for me, I didn’t want to wait until nightfall or have to return later. Instead, I mixed the Luminol tablets with distilled water, then covered myself and the test area with a tarp and several blankets. Underneath, it was almost pitch black.

When I sprayed the mixture, it revealed a sharp blue glow. Some blood was on the fur, but much of it had soaked down into the vegetation and detritus. If you look at the daylight photo of the fur, you cannot see any traces of blood at all. Using Luminol, we could see there was plenty of blood present, consistent with a coyote attack. Still, this was strong circumstantial evidence, not absolute proof. I advised the owners not to give up looking just in case this was a massive coincidence—perhaps another similar-looking cat had been caught by a coyote near their home. However, I explained that if they never found him, a coyote attack was the most likely explanation based on the dogs’ tracking behavior, the fur, and the Luminol results.

On a recent case, I was contacted by owners who found cat fur in their neighbor’s backyard. They sent me a picture, and while the pattern looked consistent with a coyote attack, I couldn’t be certain. I suggested they buy a Luminol kit from Amazon to test the area. They ran the test and found no blood, meaning the fur could have been left behind from a standard cat fight or a failed predator attack. The lack of blood gave them renewed hope of finding their cat alive.

During another recent search, my cat-detection dog, Raphael, found a significant amount of fur. We couldn’t be sure it belonged to the missing cat because there were several similar-looking cats in the neighborhood. I suggested a Luminol test to check for blood. While they didn’t find any blood right where the fur was located, they did detect streaks of blood a short distance away in an area where Raphael had shown intense interest. This evidence still wasn’t definitive proof that anything had happened to their pet; the fur could have belonged to a different cat, and the blood could have been left by a hunted rabbit. However, the test gave the owners more information and a possible explanation of what occurred.

On a different search, I didn’t have Luminol with me, so I took the found fur, vegetation, and soil samples home. Because I had the time, I set up a DSLR camera on a tripod to photograph the test, allowing for a sharp, detailed, long-exposure picture. The owner of this cat was in deep denial about his pet’s fate. My search dog had found fur in a neighbor’s yard, so I rang the neighbor’s doorbell and noticed they had a security camera. I asked if they would mind checking the footage. The camera had captured a video of two coyotes attacking what appeared to be the missing cat at the exact time it escaped. You could hear the coyotes snarling just out of frame, right where Mu had located the fur. Combined with the Luminol results from the soil sample, I told the owner it was highly likely his cat had been taken. He insisted this wasn’t true and that his cat was still alive. I didn’t argue with him. Grief and guilt are incredibly difficult to process, so I simply presented the facts as I saw them and agreed that it was strong evidence, not definitive proof. Over time, I believe he allowed himself to accept the reality. I truly hope all that evidence *was* just a massive coincidence and that he later found his cat alive.

If an owner desires, DNA testing is another option. However, it can be very expensive and isn’t always conclusive. In the case of the owner in denial, proving the fur belonged to his cat still wouldn’t definitively prove the cat was deceased. If owners wish to pursue this, I provide them with the information for a specialized animal forensics DNA lab at UC Davis, though most people opt not to use it.

Out of more than 3,000 cases where Three Retrievers has conducted a search or investigation, we have used Luminol about 100 times. I generally recommend it when there is physical evidence that something occurred, but the owners want more clarity. This includes situations where a collar is found, fur is discovered, or a security camera captures an ambiguous event in the yard. Most of the time, we use Luminol because one of my search dogs alerts to trace evidence that a human eye would completely miss. If you find yourself in a situation where you discover a collar or a large clump of fur, it doesn’t hurt to try a Luminol test to get more information.

Luminol is readily available on Amazon. A kit with enough tablets for four applications costs around $38 and can often be delivered overnight. Be sure to follow the instructions exactly. Use a pristine spray bottle—preferably one that has never held any other chemicals—and mix the tablets with distilled water. If you use tap water, the trace iron in the water will cause the entire mixture to glow blue uniformly. Allow the tablets several minutes to dissolve completely by gently swirling the bottle. According to all available research, Luminol is non-toxic; while you wouldn’t want to drink it, you don’t need to worry about contaminating the ground.

It is best to use Luminol in total darkness. If there are ambient neighborhood lights, you can cover the area with a few layers of blankets or tarps and crawl underneath to spray and photograph the results. Give your eyes a moment to adjust to the dark. Because the blue glow only lasts for a minute or two, take photos of the spray pattern so you can examine them closely later. Most modern smartphones take excellent low-light photos and may even capture details invisible to the naked eye. Take pictures of the scene with full lighting so you can compare it with the Luminol photos. If you have a large area to cover, consider mixing a double batch.

To ensure my Luminol is working properly and to know exactly what a positive reaction looks like, I have tested it using my own blood. Because I am frequently scratched by blackberry thorns while working with the search dogs, I almost always have a recent scab I can open to get a drop of blood on a paper towel. It sounds a bit grim when written out, but such is my life. Alternatively, a standard diabetic lancet device can safely obtain a tiny drop of blood from a fingertip. If you use a knife instead, ensure it is clean and sterile. Dab a little blood on a paper towel and include it in the area where you spray the Luminol for testing.

If your cat or small dog goes missing and you are never able to find them, you may always be left wondering what happened. Should you keep searching forever? If a Luminol test indicates the presence of a significant amount of blood, it may provide a painful but necessary piece of the answer. Most people tell me they prefer knowing the truth over a lifetime of uncertainty. If you need to use Luminol, I am incredibly sorry that you are in that situation. If you have questions about using it, or about other methods for finding a lost pet, please contact us through our webpage.

Vienna

On April 24th, Tino and I had been following a scent trail for four hours. We received confirmation from witnesses at several points that we were on the right path and catching up to the little dog. In a forest between homes, as Tino was tracking her scent, we came upon fresh coyote tracks moving in the exact direction the little white dog was going. Tino and I wanted to catch up to her before it was too late, but at the same time, we didn’t want to make her feel like she was being chased. I was constantly looking ahead, hoping I could spot her from a distance so we could stop outside of her comfort zone and let her stay put.

Tino had been working longer than he usually does, so we took a break at the edge of the Snoqualmie River so he could cool off and get a drink. He had been working hard on the scent trail, but he had also been doing the hardest part of the job: waiting. At several points, he had to sit patiently while we got permission to cross private property, resuming the search only when we got the green light. Tino is a dog that likes to go, not wait.

As we stood at the river’s edge, we both happened to look northwest, away from the water—I don’t know why—and the little white dog came tearing through the sand and rocks, coming from the very direction we had been headed. She seemed to be muttering as she raced past, like, *“Nope, not gonna be found by that giant, wolf-looking dog.”* As she flew by, Tino let out a few high-pitched barks, clearly saying, “Hey! That’s the dog we’ve been trying to find!”

I said, “Yeah, I know, T, but we’re going to have to let her go for now.”

To understand how we ended up on that riverbank, we have to go back to April 19th, when a little white dog, very similar to my Fozzie, went missing near a trailhead in North Bend. Her name is Vienna, and her leash had become tangled just as they started out on their planned hike. As Vienna’s owners were trying to get her sorted out, she panicked and ran. By the time they contacted Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, three days after her escape, she had been seen diving into the bushes in a few places along Mt. Si Road. She had just been adopted a couple of weeks earlier and was completely unfamiliar with the area.

On the morning of the 24th, Tino and I started our search at a possible sighting east of the Teneriffe trailhead. Tino tried to pick up the scent but didn’t indicate that Vienna had been there. We moved to the location of another reported sighting, and this time, Tino locked onto a trail. We tracked the scent in and out of various properties. Along the way, Tino found a spring-fed creek passing through a yard and lay down in it to cool off and get a drink. We followed a meandering, looping path for about an hour before we received a report of a new sighting two miles west.

At the new location, Tino tracked through the woods and several yards to a gravel road near the river. He led us onto a vacant lot filled with derelict cars near an abandoned home. Using a property app on my phone, I could tell who owned which parcels. The vacant lot was part of a large, mostly wooded property. Because no one lived there and it wasn’t fenced off, I continued down the scent trail.

The trail led us to a dry channel of the river—a parallel branch that only runs when the river floods, but remains an avenue of boulders and stones for most of the year. Across this dry riverbed, a herd of elk watched us. They were huge, the size of horses, and they stared intently as we watched them back. Tino stayed remarkably calm. One of the elk wore a tracking collar similar to Tino’s, leaving me curious about how it functioned without a way to recharge the battery. I asked the elk if they had seen a little white dog running by, but they just stared.

We followed the scent trail along a narrow path through the woods. This was an animal trail, not one normally used by people, so while Tino had an easy time slipping through, I had to duck and navigate branches, fallen logs, and thorns. We came to another private property—a house with a barn—so we paused at the boundary while Vienna’s owner went up to the house to ask for permission to continue.

After working through that property, we hit another: a house with a dog and a goat in a fenced backyard, and a second goat wandering outside the fence. The homeowner kindly said we could continue as long as we didn’t bother the animals. However, as we drew closer, the resident dog went completely nuts. I was certain he could jump the fence if he wanted to, and I didn’t want to risk a confrontation. I decided to halt the tracking there and transition to setting traps.

As we made our way back to the road, another homeowner, kitty-corner from the house with the goats, called out that she had just seen Vienna in her backyard. We spun around and started tracking again, only to hit yet another property line where we had to stop and ask permission. Once cleared, we resumed tracking into the woods, right to the point where I spotted those fresh coyote tracks moving in Vienna’s direction.

It was a beautiful forest. While a massive part of my attention was focused on searching for Vienna—looking for tracks, scanning for tiny white hairs caught on thorns, and reading Tino’s body language—I was also deeply aware of being in a perfect, pristine forest, as if the human world outside didn’t exist. I was with my partner, my best friend, doing work that neither of us could do without the other. We were on a scent trail in the wilderness, completely removed from voices, machines, or structures. There was only the sound of the river in the distance and the songs of the birds.

Tino was doing amazing work, tracking an invisible trail and leading us right to the path of the lost dog. I deeply hoped we would catch up to her, but in that moment, when the outcome of the game was entirely unknown, I just enjoyed how perfectly we were working as a team. While maintaining my focus on the track, I consciously expanded that moment in time, knowing I would always want to remember working this way with Valentino, no matter the outcome. Anywhere I looked, there were only trees, ferns, and salmonberry. Just Tino and me in a timeless wilderness, performing the same actions our ancestors might have thousands of years ago.

After Vienna raced past us at the river looking panicked, I knew we had to stop. Up until that point, she probably hadn’t realized we were tracking her. Once she saw us, I didn’t want to risk spooking her out of the area entirely. To complicate things, a family member at the property she ran toward informed us that we no longer had permission to enter, so we couldn’t have followed her anyway.

Although she was in an area heavily populated by coyotes—and every neighbor we met warned us she stood little chance of survival—I still felt she was safer in that specific neighborhood between the river and the main road, where she had a million places to hide. Our best strategy now was to set traps and wildlife cameras and hope she would wander into one. That afternoon, using the scent trail Tino had mapped out as our guide, we set four traps watched over by wildlife cameras.

Dorie, Judy, and Susan are volunteers with a couple of nonprofit rescues that help lost dogs: Useless Bay Sanctuary and Sno Valley Pet Services. They are incredibly talented and tenacious; once they lock onto a dog, they almost always bring her home. They had been tracking Vienna’s sightings as well. After we ended our search for the day, they set three additional traps in the area.

The next day, Vienna was spotted moving west toward the Mt. Si trailhead. Susan, Judy, Dorie, and I went to scout the area and reposition the traps. There was one particular house I strongly suspected Vienna might be hanging out near—it was unoccupied, well-maintained, and up for sale. I had a feeling she was hiding under the back porch, but I couldn’t reach anyone to get permission to search. We didn’t see her that day, but we successfully reset the four traps in new, strategic locations.

The next day, Vienna walked right into the trap Judy had set. The wildlife camera caught the moment, so we knew immediately that she was safe. Judy and Susan arrived quickly and loaded her into the vehicle. She was in remarkably good health, happy to be back with her new family, and safely out of the woods. When I told Tino that the little dog was safe, he looked at me and told me he wanted a cookie.

Most people who contact Three Retrievers are primarily interested in the services of the search dogs. Valentino and Raphael are brilliant at what they do, but they are not a silver bullet. Many people seem to think, *well, a search dog is on the case, game over, my pet is as good as found.*

As Tino’s search for Vienna illustrates, a search dog can perform flawlessly, yet we can still be stopped by private property boundaries or the risk of flushing a panicked animal out of her safe zone. I wish Tino and Raphi were successful every single time we went out, but I always emphasize to owners that a search dog is just one tool in the toolkit. To maximize your chances of finding a lost cat or dog, you have to deploy every technique available. Signs, traps, volunteers, and wildlife cameras all played vital roles in safely catching Vienna. When Tino goes to work, he gives it everything he has, but he can only do what he can do.

On our website and in this newsletter, you can find an endless library of tips and stories designed to help you find a missing pet. There is almost always an article that directly applies to your unique situation. I am always happy to bring out a search dog when it’s appropriate and possible, but the information shared here can be just as lifesaving.

Recently, I hurt my knee, and I don’t know exactly how long I will be sidelined from working the dogs in the field. I guess it will give me more time to write. It truly helps us out when people subscribe to our newsletter, whether through a paid or free subscription. There is bound to be a story or an educational article here that could help someone you know. I hope you will consider sharing this newsletter; free subscriptions help get this vital information to the people who need it most, and paid subscriptions help us get by when we hit unexpected setbacks like a wounded knee. Thank you.

I recommend that most people don’t read this article. I am writing about this case because it was an unusual situation, something I had not encountered in the past 18 years. I think it would be important for people to know if they do the work I do, but if your pet is missing right now, this isn’t really very likely to help you.

Bear was a sweet, friendly Bichon, about 5 years old, I think. He was 11 pounds. He had a family that loved him and he was well taken care of. A door was not properly closed, he wandered out, and within moments he just happened to encounter a coyote. Certainly I have failed to latch a door a few times and my dogs have gotten out. I have been able to round them up quickly and get them safe. It was just unfortunate timing that the moment Bear wandered out the door, curiously exploring, possibly looking for his family, a coyote passed right by the front of their house. This wasn’t in the wilderness or a rural setting. This was in a standard suburban housing development with a green belt between homes, just like you find all over Western Washington.

Their surveillance cameras caught Bear coming out to the driveway at 6:51 PM, while it was still full daylight, on a nice, sunny spring day. In the video, Bear is just sniffing around, and then he hears something. He runs around the RV while the camera sees a coyote coming from the West. The coyote sees Bear, and then turns and runs away from him. The coyote doesn’t sprint away, but runs at a medium speed, kind of galloping away. We see Bear running after the coyote, not barking, but with a playful gallop as if he is curious and like he might want to play with this animal that looks like a dog. How would a little dog who has never seen a coyote know that this is not a typical dog? They run behind a van, and then there is no more video of Bear.

The owners of Bear contacted me. I told them that I couldn’t use a search dog right away because it was too warm, and because I had other searches lined up for the coming days. Because I happened to be just a few blocks away at the time, and because the owners were away on a trip, I told them I could just go look at the situation near their house, to see if I might see any evidence or signs, based on my experience. They said they would like me to go look. Because they had video of Bear chasing a coyote, they did not have high hopes that he was still alive.

When I got there, I saw white fluff everywhere, from the cottonwood trees. It almost looked like it had snowed. I thought it would be very difficult to see any evidence with so much white fluff everywhere. I noticed where there were footprints, probably human, in the grass, leading to a trail into the woods. I followed that path, looking at the ground carefully. I noticed one bit of white that was maybe a little different than the other white fluff everywhere. I went to pick it up, to examine it, and I was startled when it was attached to a foot. I brushed away a little of the leaf litter, and saw that it was a foot.

The body of Bear had been covered so perfectly that I thought it must have been done by a human, which really didn’t make any sense. I asked AI, which I don’t always trust. The sources of information are a bit thin, but I don’t see any obvious reason to doubt them. AI said that coyotes have been known to bury remains in a shallow depression by covering a body with leafy debris, so they can come back later. They don’t want other predators to find the body before they come back. I absolutely did not know this was a known behavior of coyotes. I assumed, based on all the evidence I have found with my search dogs over the past 18 years, that a coyote would immediately consume some or all of a small animal right away, and that they would carry away whatever they did not immediately consume.

In 18 years of searches, I have seen the aftermath of a coyote attack probably more than 300 times. I have been able to find this evidence because my dogs pointed it out to me. It was usually something small and hard to notice with the eye, requiring a dog’s nose to locate. If there had ever been a body of a small dog or cat concealed in this way, I am 100% certain my dogs would have discovered it. Perhaps it is the timing of when we do these searches. Maybe this behavior is more common than I was aware, but we don’t detect the evidence or find the body because the coyote has already returned to claim his meal before we start the search. I am including pictures because I want people to know what this looks like. The pictures below are not graphic. It looks like Bear is sleeping. I absolutely would have overlooked this concealed body if I wasn’t looking very carefully for traces of evidence. Several people had already walked right by this location, nearly stepping on the body, and they did not see it.

One other note. Based on evidence in the form of witness statements, we know that coyote attacks are sudden and that in most cases a cat or small dog will be killed instantly, and they normally don’t suffer a slow and painful death. Coyotes aren’t being merciful. They are being stealthy. They don’t want their prey to make any sound that might alert other predators or other coyotes who might take their prey. In hundreds of witness statements, what is notable about coyote attacks is what they didn’t hear. In case after case, the owner of the cat or small dog says their pet was there one moment, they looked away, and when they looked back 30 seconds or a minute later, their pet had simply vanished, as if beamed away by aliens. This is the coyote way, sudden and silent. That the body of Bear looked completely normal, with no sign of injury, is further proof of this attack method. The coyote broke his neck suddenly, and covered the body quickly, and then sneaked away from the area before anyone could notice him.

I am not making any claims about how frequently this happens, although I think it must be rare. Also, I can’t guarantee that the coyote was the one who covered Bear’s body. Given that we saw the coyote on camera, and the burial site was maybe fifteen feet from where Bear and the coyote were last seen on camera, it is the most logical explanation. I was really very surprised at this behavior because it seems like I would have encountered this situation before in 18 years of searching for thousands of lost pets. I wanted to document this case so that the information might help someone else who is looking for a lost cat or small dog.

In this first image, most people would not even know there was a dog there. This was after I brushed away a bit of the leafy debris. When I first looked, only about half an inch of white fur was visible.

Note: the post by the body kind of looks like a grave marker. There were other posts or sticks in the vacant lot, sticking up like this one, which had been placed there at some time in the past for some other purpose. It is just coincidental that the coyote covered the body right by this post in a manner suggesting it is a grave marker, which it is not.

[Please note that you can make excellent use of AI by listening to a narrated version of this article in the SubStack app, the play button at the upper right corner. This way, you can listen to this article, which is longer than some people might have time to read, while you are walking your dogs and listening to birds. The AI narration is not perfect, and you will notice that it gets the wrong sense of words like read and read, but these small errors don’t detract from the convenience and utility too much.]

I find AI useful every day. In particular, I use the Merlin bird identification app. It’s like a miracle, listening to the birds I hear around me as I walk the dogs. Last week I heard 25 species of birds around the house and in the woods. I could not have identified all of them without the app. Using the app also helps me to be able to identify those birds myself, with practice. One excellent feature of the app is that it gives you a little indicator if the bird identified is doubtful because that bird shouldn’t really be in the area. The app probably misheard a bird or interpreted some background noise as a bird. I use this app often. It is extremely helpful, and just cool. However, I don’t need to rely on the bird identification app. If I miss a bird or get the wrong bird, it’s not too important. I can enjoy AI and get real value from it even when I don’t entirely trust it.

This isn’t really news, or controversial. Most AI models even tell you not to trust them, that they can make mistakes and hallucinate. I had been using AI because it’s easy, and because it can generate a detailed answer in a few moments. Just a few moments ago, I asked AI to identify a truck from a somewhat blurry picture of just the front, and it quickly told me the make, model, and year. The answer seems plausible, and it is not something I am relying on for absolute accuracy. If I needed to, I could verify the answer with a search for that make, model, and year, to compare. I have found that I am most impressed with answers on topics that I don’t know that much about. Recently, I have seen Meta’s AI jump into Facebook posts, uninvited, about lost pets with advice on how to find a lost pet. This information was 80% correct, but the 20% it got wrong was critical, and could make a huge difference in whether you get your dog or cat back.

I have found that AI will be very confident about its errors. I recently asked if it was true that the millionaire got trampled by an elephant because it seems like a hoax. AI said it was a hoax, and the millionaire actually died a couple of years earlier. Then I saw a headline at the New York Times, and whatever my criticisms of the Times, I doubt they would casually publish a hoax as fact. Multiple news outlets have articles about the hunter being trampled by elephants, so I tend to believe them. It doesn’t really impact my life one way or another if it’s true or not. I asked the AI why it couldn’t simply fact-check itself. If I could check multiple news sources and see that the AI was wrong, well, the AI could easily have checked those same sources. The AI explained that it is skilled at predicting the next word in a sentence, and fact checking isn’t really its strength, or even its responsibility. This excuse makes no sense to me. Obviously, the AI looked at some source to start to form the answer. I don’t think it just completely made up everything in its answer. The AI just didn’t seem to think accuracy was as important as speed and confidence. The AI seemed proud to just generate slop and not care about truth.

Whether or not a millionaire was trampled by elephants is not critically important, but whether a target in Iran is a military base or a girls’ school is very important. This incident is still under investigation, and human error was involved at some point. AI was definitely used for targeting, and AI did not identify the old outdated information as inaccurate when compared to new data. Whether humans or AI are to blame for the death of those girls is an important question to answer, even though the ultimate blame lies with an administration that went to war without authorization, without a plan, and without a real reason. This mixup is similar to what happens when you ask AI for help about your lost dog; there will probably be errors in the answers that are partially the fault of the AI and partially the fault of the misinformation floating around the internet and social media.

One of the main purposes of the AI models offered by the tech giants is to keep you engaged, to entice you to keep using it. AI tries to be your friend. I actually enjoyed having a wise friend in my pocket so I could ask anything, like the quality of a certain dog food, or why the matter and antimatter that annihilated each other seconds after the big bang left any matter behind to become our physical universe. However, AI is sometimes like Cliff Claven, starting from some little known and useless fact and extrapolating it into a complex answer. If I don’t know much about a certain topic, it sounds like AI knows what it’s talking about. When it comes to lost pets, I have more knowledge and experience than anyone else in the Seattle area, that I know of, and I find that AI makes many errors that could be costly. As AI tries to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, it can be tempting to just accept what it says as true. It seems so friendly and helpful, why would it lie? AI doesn’t have any motive to prevent you from finding your lost pet, so you wouldn’t suspect them of deliberate deception. I hope they improve AI soon, with the fact checking it needs, so we really can rely on the answers. If you are in a hurry and need an answer fast, maybe go ahead and try it, if the topic is not a critical one. Do not trust AI with anything that matters.

I have provided voluminous information about finding lost pets. At my web page and in my newsletter, I have about 300 articles about how to find lost pets. The trouble is, it is too much information for someone who is missing their cat or dog and needs help right now. In the future, I hope to have an AI or app that can access all of my information and use it for a chat bot specifically about lost pets. I think this could be very helpful. You could ask the 3R Lost Pet Chat Bot, “Why am I not supposed to call the name of my lost dog?” It would tell you that based on thousands of first hand experiences, it often happens that calling a dog’s name causes him to run away if he is in flight mode. Currently, if you ask Meta that question, it is giving the wrong answer. Hopefully they will improve soon.

Finding lost pets involves many strategies that are counterintuitive. Like, if you see a nervous stray dog in the street, instead of walking toward the dog, your best strategy is to walk away from the dog to entice him to follow. I think part of AI’s problem regarding lost pets is that there is so much bad advice floating around the internet. For example, I don’t cover my humane traps. I have trapped over a thousand cats and dogs. I have watched dogs approach the trap, and they like to look in and also look through the trap to make sure no one is sneaking up on them. Apparently, as far as I know, (I am not an expert on trapping feral cats), it is common for feral cat trappers to cover their traps. I believe this started when they learned from experience that the feral cats would freak out less if the traps were covered and the frightened cat couldn’t see out, after they were trapped. From this, the idea has spread that all traps should always be covered. Until someone does an experiment, on video, showing that the majority of lost cats and dogs will go into a covered trap instead of an uncovered trap, all other things being equal, I am going to go with my experience and never cover my traps. If an AI was rooting around the internet for how to trap cats and dogs, it might think that covering traps is best.

Another problem with AI is that criminals are now using it for scams. People who have missing cats and dogs have reported to me that scammers have sent them AI generated images purportedly of their lost pet, claiming they had the pet and seeking a reward. These owners were able to see the flaws in the pictures and videos, but soon AI will improve fakes so you can’t tell them apart from the real thing. Scammers also use AI to build instant web pages trying to convince pet owners that their services are real. Scammers steal content from my web page, and even say they work for my company, to try to squeeze money out of people in distress. When your pet is missing, you would do anything to get her back, and scammers specificaly target grieving pet owners because of their vulnerability.

AI probably is headed along the path of social media: generally harmful but indispensable in daily life for some people. I deeply and passionately hate Facebook. I think it is a bad product, and often it doesn’t even work as advertised. The worst thing about Facebook is that they just don’t care. Facebook made billions of dollars off of scam ads. Don’t take my word for it. https://apple.news/A3DWvCE3lT3605xIMrmg-hA Facebook was probably the tipping point in the 2016 election, knowingly allowing Russian influence. I am now restricted on Facebook because of something I posted. On my Facebook page, I wrote, “I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” Obviously, I was referring to RFK Jr. and pointing out his absolute unfitness for his current government position. Anyone who knows me at all would not think I actually snorted cocaine off of toilet seats. Facebook says I was promoting drug use, and restricted my account, so fewer people would see my posts. Besides the fact that I was quoting the Secretary of Health, and not talking about myself, even if I was talking about my own personal history, saying I used to do something does not mean that I do it now, or that I was offering drugs for sale or something. My post was flagged by an AI bot, and my punishment was handed down by an AI bot, with no person ever seeing the case. A human would have got what my intent was. I would gladly quit Facebook except that the majority of my work saving lost cats and dogs relies on Facebook for instant communication when time is critical. Facebook isn’t the only platform that could be used for lost pets, but that’s where people are established, and it would be very difficult to migrate to a new platform. The Lost Dogs of King County Facebook group has 65,000 members, and they aren’t all going to suddenly jump to BlueSky because I ask them to. Facebook knows that most users are stuck there because of the relationships they have established, and Facebook can be as unreasonable as they want to be without ever fearing a mass exodus.

AI companies seem to be looking for the same sort of lock in. They don’t care about the effectiveness of their product, as long as people use it often, and pay a subscription fee. As a test, I asked Claude if humane traps should be covered. It said yes. I corrected Claude and explained why. Claude said thanks for letting me know, and please tell me more about trapping. I asked Claude if other people in the world would now get the correct information now that Claude knew the facts. Claude said, No, it would forget the entire conversation as soon as it was over. Claude was just stringing me along in a pointless conversation just to keep my attention. I am not hopeful that AI will ever reach its full potential because the big companies building it have found that they can capture market share just by appearing friendly and chatty and keeping people in their chat windows. Please watch the excellent video from John Oliver about how trusting AI can be a deadly mistake.

When your cat or dog is missing, you need help fast. I have created two guides, one for cats and one for dogs, to try to give you the basics quickly without overloading you with too much information. I’m sorry that i can’t help everyone who contacts me with tailored advice right away. Anything you could possibly want to know about finding lost pets is contained in my web site or in my newsletter, yet I recognize that when time is of the essence, you can’t read a million words. Please do read the Guides, even if it feels like you are taking time away from the search. The time you spend reading the guides will save you from wasting time or from hurting your chances. The average owner of a lost pet will spend more than 50 hours searching, and taking an hour to read my guide is definitely going to help you make sure your search time is spent wisely. If you just jump into your search without reading my guide, you could be making mistakes that will hurt your overall chances of finding your cat or dog. As tempting as it may be, don’t ask AI what you should do to find your lost pet. It will instantly give you an answer that sounds logical and seems helpful, and you won’t be able to spot the flaws when 80% is true and 20% is false and harmful. Someday, there will be an AI version of me, and I will be able to help everyone individually and quickly, with accurate and helpful information. We aren’t there yet.

https://www.3retrievers.com/guide-to-finding-lost-dogs.html

If I were independently wealthy, I would do my job for free. I love working with my search dogs. I always want to help every lost cat and dog that I can. If I won the lottery, I would find more ways to help dogs and cats. Recently, we searched for a lost cat, and when we were done with the search, checking all of the yards where we had permission, I asked the owner of the cat how she wanted to pay for the search. She was shocked that I would charge for the service, or so she said. I pointed out that it states right on the contact form she filled out that the fee for the search dog is $350. She said she hadn’t seen that, and if she had, then she wouldn’t have requested the search dog. People certainly have the right not to hire us, if they don’t want to. I have since changed the contact form so that the owner of the lost cat or dog has to fill in a blank acknowledging that there is a fee for the search dog. I hope this prevents any such misunderstanding in the future.

If your son or daughter were lost in the mountains, and you contacted the police, they would eventually activate an organized volunteer search and rescue team who would go out looking for your child, possibly using search dogs. You would not be charged for this. I agree with this policy, but the nine volunteer teams in King County are activated 200 times a year, and they have support from the Sheriff’s Office. More than 10,000 dogs go missing each year in King County alone. Possibly just as many cats go missing, but the records for lost cats are not as complete. In the counties I cover, King, Snohomish, Pierce, Thurston, Mason, Kitsap, and Skagit, hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs go missing every year. Although many people help keep an eye out for these lost pets, through various Facebook lost pet groups, only one person has been offering search dogs services in Western Washington for the past 18 years. If I worked a full-time job doing some other work, I would not be able to help as many people as I do.

Dogs are expensive, even if they aren’t working dogs. The average dog might cost $2,000 per year with food, vet bills, insurance, and medications. That doesn’t even count the value of furniture and carpets destroyed. Until recently, I had five dogs. Now I have 4. Between dog expenses, car expenses and groceries, I am just barely making enough to get by. I am not getting rich off of searching for lost pets. If I had done pretty much any other job for the past 18 years, I’m sure I could have been better off financially.

Because I am the only person in Western Washington, that I know of, offering the services of a search dog for lost pets, theoretically I could charge whatever I want. There is no law saying that a search dog should cost $350. There is a person living in another state who will bring a search dog here for $5,000. I definitely don’t recommend you hire this person, but people can charge whatever they want if people are willing to pay. I have tried to keep my fees low so that people don’t feel like they can’t afford a search dog. The fee for a search dog is probably less than you would pay for a typical vet visit.

One reason I’m glad we do charge a fee is because, if we didn’t, if we did searches for free, then everyone would ask for the search dog, all the time, and of course we could not do 100,000 searches for lost pets every year. I quite often advise people not to use the search dog if I think our chances of success would be low due to the passage of time or the conditions. If the search dog was free to everyone, then there would need to be some sort of criteria or governing body to decide when the search dog was both necessary and likely to succeed. It would not be a good use of the resource to have a search dog searching every single day for lost dogs and cats when he has little or no chance of finding them. Before we come out and do a search, I let people know what I think our odds of success are, based on the facts of the case and the environment and conditions. Success is never guaranteed, but I like for people to have a realistic idea of what we can and can’t do.

I would greatly prefer that no one ever needed our services. Our web page, www.3retrievers.com, has loss prevention advice for cats and dogs. This newsletter has over 250 articles about finding lost pets, and also loss prevention. For 18 years, I have been telling anyone who would listen how to keep their dogs and cats safe, how to protect them against coyotes, and how to find your pet fast if they should go missing. If hundreds of thousands of pets are going missing in Western Washington each year, it seems like my message is not reaching people. If you don’t want to pay for the services of a search dog, please read my website and my newsletter for all of the ways you can keep your pet safe. I understand that we probably will never get the number of lost pets down to zero, but if everyone followed all the advice in my guides, we could eliminate 90% of the missing pets in Western Washington.

If your cat or dog is lost right now, you have available to you this encyclopedia of knowledge from 18 years of finding lost pets, telling you which techniques are most likely to work. If you decide not to hire the search dog, you still can find your cat or dog using the many other techniques I describe in my free guides. If you decide to hire the search dog, please know that I am not doing this job so I can make money. I have to make money so I can do this job. If I could manage to do it for free, I would.

My search dogs and I have found the lost cat or dog, or their remains, at least 500 times. In at least 250 of those searches, the pet would not have been located by any other means besides the search dog. When Tino found the 150-pound dog stuck in mud up to his neck, in the middle of hundreds of acres of forest, that dog would not have been found by any other means. If one of my dogs was missing, I would happily pay for a search dog to find him. I hope you never need our services, but if you do, I just wanted you to know why we charge a fee.

This is a longer one. I often like to listen to Substack posts using the narration option in the Substack app. You could listen to this as you are stuck in traffic. The AI Substack narration is not perfect, but it’s pretty good.

Amelia, Rui, Sophie, Bella, and Stevie are all dogs who were lost and traveling next to freeways or busy highways. I could have made this article ten times longer by including such dogs as Oban, Penny Moo, and my own dogs, Raphael, Fozzie, Sky, and Tino. All of them were captured very close to or actually on a freeway, where taking the wrong approach would have meant death. Fozzie was reported to me when someone saw him on the freeway. I made a couple of passes, looking for him, and then went on the surface street under that section of freeway and saw him. I set the humane trap and caught him in under ten minutes. Most people don’t have a humane trap, and the average person would have tried to catch Fozzie by coaxing and calling him, which likely would have spooked him back onto the freeway. If you see a lost dog near a freeway, of course you want to help, but often the most helpful thing you can do is nothing. At least, you want the dog to think you are doing nothing, regarding her. If you see a lost dog near a freeway in Western Washington, please contact Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, Useless Bay Sanctuary, or Lost Dogs of King County. Absolutely, whatever else you do, do not chase the dog. Do not chase a dog ever, but especially near a freeway.

Amelia was reported to me as running on the expressways in and out of SeaTac Airport. This is at the intersection of several freeways: I-5, 518, 405, 509, and Highway 99. This area has planes, trains, and automobiles. It is about the busiest place in Washington State. Amelia, the name I gave her after I caught her, was seen peeking through the railing above the exit from the parking garage and beneath the light rail station. When I went there to check out the situation and see where she might be hanging out, I tried not to disturb her at all. While my back was turned to her, she popped out of a shrub and trotted away to the south, under the train tracks. I did not follow her because I wanted her to stay in her little oasis. She appeared to be a cattle dog or a mix, maybe about 30 pounds. The expressway is on either side of this elevated patch of grass, underneath the elevated train. The speed limit on the expressway varies from 30 to 40, but people often drive 60 MPH because it looks like a freeway, and also the traffic is often at a dead stop because of congestion. I have picked up many dogs who died on the SeaTac Airport Expressway.

As I was parked next to Amelia’s safe haven, which was a narrow strip of grass surrounded by a wall and a metal railing on one side and a concrete barrier on the other side, a police officer pulled in behind me and said I couldn’t be parked there. I said I would move, but I took the opportunity to ask about the dog under the train tracks. He said the dog had been around for two weeks, but no one could catch her. I was certain that I could. I set up a camera with some food under the light rail station, between the inbound and outbound expressways, just after midnight on January 5th. She appeared on my camera later that day, eating the food I had put out. Because this is a sensitive area, being the airport, with heightened security, I wasn’t certain if I could just set a trap there. Every person I asked said I should ask someone else. After calling or emailing a dozen people, I finally got someone who didn’t just immediately say I should call someone else. I explained what I was trying to do, help a lost dog, and after many clarifications, he said, “If there isn’t a sign saying the area is prohibited, then you can walk there.” That was good enough for me. As I was planning to set the trap, my camera captured an image of three young men running through Amelia’s oasis, most likely chasing her, since there would be no other reason for a human to be there. They probably just arrived home from a trip, they seemed to be brothers, and they must have seen Amelia looking out through the metal railing in the elevated grassy area. They decided to help her, and chased after her, which is the usual script people follow. Amelia is fast, and there is no way they ever could have caught her. Fortunately, they didn’t chase her out of her safe space, and she appeared on camera later in the day.

I set the trap on January 7th, just after 7 p.m. I parked in the parking garage, and I carried the 40-pound trap 300 yards through the parking garage, down the stairs, across the exit lanes, through the landscape, to the strip of grass under the train tracks. As I was carrying the trap, which is 48 inches long, a police car pulled up and parked next to the grass strip. I thought for sure he was going to ask me what the hell I was doing and tell me to get out of there, but either he didn’t notice me, or he didn’t mind that I was there, and so I just kept walking. I set the trap in front of the camera at about 7:20 p.m. By 7:43 p.m., Amelia came around and noticed the trap. The next capture of the wildlife camera was 7:45 p.m., and Amelia was safe inside the trap. I saw her from my iPhone, from the transmission from the wildlife camera, and I had to drive out of the parking lot, pay for parking, and drive around to the shoulder of the expressway near the concrete barrier near Amelia in the trap. It took me nine minutes to get there.

When I got to the trap, Amelia was furious, and she made it as clear as she possibly could that she intended to murder me the first chance she got. I mostly ignored her. I sat on the grass for a while, not looking at her, and she calmed down. I hauled the trap to the concrete barrier by lifting one end and dragging it. I tipped it up over the barrier, balanced it on top, climbed over, and then tipped it down on the other side. I loaded her and the trap into the back of the car, and Tino sniffed at the trap. Mostly, he wanted any Vienna Sausage that might be left over, but Amelia had eaten it all. She continued to bark a little as we drove to the shelter, to the after-hours kennel in the back. As I unloaded the trap from the car and moved her to the kennel, she had calmed down quite a bit. Inside the kennel, I opened the trap, still ignoring her. Despite her earlier promise to murder me, I didn’t think she would bite me, but you never know. I have been bitten more than a dozen times over the years, and in each instance, I knew it wasn’t the dog’s fault. I was just calm around Amelia and let her check out the kennel. I sat down with my back against the wire mesh, my legs stretched out in front of me, and let Amelia sniff around and get used to the kennel space, about 30 square feet. After a few minutes, she sat next to me, and I started to pet her, gently, on her side. After about 30 seconds of that, she was right up in my face, wanting to be petted all over. She was my new best friend, and decided not to murder me after all. I was trying to get her picture, but she was only inches from my face. I had to push her away while petting her chest to get enough space to shoot a video. I sat with her for over an hour. I imagined how she could be my dog, and she could become a search dog, and I would love her forever, except that I already had four dogs. I knew she would find a good home. As of this writing, she is available for adoption from Pacific Rim Rescue, and you can see her on their website. If you adopt her in the Seattle area, I will provide free training if you train her to become a search dog for lost dogs or cats. Amelia absolutely is soulmate material for the right person.

If not for a humane trap and the knowledge of how to approach lost dogs near freeways and busy streets, it is very likely that Amelia would eventually have been hit and killed on the freeway when someone with good intentions chased after her to help her. I would have received a message to go pick up her body from the expressway. A humane trap is a miraculous, simple, relatively easy, lifesaving tool when used properly and combined with a knowledge of lost dog behavior.

The next day, I started helping Rui, a dog lost in Kirkland, next to the 405 freeway. Rui had a tracker like an AirTag, but it was from Korea. It was working, and it periodically showed her location, but someone in Korea had to view the location and then send the screenshot to the owners here in Kirkland. It showed she was on the freeway, but the owners thought that must be a signal error, because the blip moved around, and she couldn’t be on the freeway. I explained how dogs on the run will run to a freeway for a couple of reasons. First, the freeway is a rushing sound, and it is my theory that this is a kind of white noise that can be soothing for a dog, and drown out all of the little sounds that could be interpreted as a threat. The second reason dogs end up on freeways is because they feel like they are being chased by those people who see them and want to help. If there is an intersection with a main road, and a freeway off-ramp and a freeway on-ramp, a stray or lost dog is most likely to run up the off-ramp, against traffic, because that is the only way she can run where people won’t try to chase her. You can’t back up your car on the off-ramp or drive the wrong way. Most people give up at that point. We have found many dogs on the shoulder of the freeway, or in the median between the opposing directions. Or dead, on the shoulder of the freeway. Because the blip was moving, it appeared she was alive. I told the owners of Rui that a search dog was not recommended for this situation because I can’t work a search dog on the freeway, and because it would probably spook her. I suggested they go look from the shoulder of the freeway, being sure to stay in their cars, and to definitely not approach her. They did go look, in the place they thought she couldn’t possibly be, and there she was, sleeping under a bush. I told them I would go set the humane trap for her that night.

Under cover of darkness, with the roar of the freeway masking any sound I might make, I carried the humane trap from the cross street up through the median about 100 yards to where the last blip came from. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at Rui or a plastic bag, since there is often a lot of garbage in the highway median. She moved a little and I saw it was her. Quietly, I set up the trap about 40 feet from her. I didn’t think she was looking my direction, and it was fairly dark and I wasn’t using a flashlight. I didn’t think she would see or hear me, but apparently she did, and she moved slowly to the north. I thought that would be okay, and that she would probably come back since I wasn’t moving towards her. I set the trap and camera. She never showed up on camera.

The next day, she was seen in the same strip of grass between parts of the freeway, but she moved quite a way north, maybe several hundred feet. Stephanie Seek was there with her drone and could see Rui napping in the bushes. While Stephanie guided me with her drone, I quietly positioned myself north of Rui’s hiding spot. While Stephanie said Rui had her head down, not looking at me, I climbed over the concrete barrier and set the trap near the barrier and north of Rui. There was a trap north of her and south of her. With guidance from Stephanie, I threw chunks of hot chicken, provided by volunteer Judy Cecil, into the median, making a trail from Rui’s hiding place to the trap. I went back north of the trap and waited. Stephanie reported that Rui was following the chicken trail perfectly, getting closer to the trap. Just about then, two police cars came up and asked me what I was doing. They had reports of a man on the freeway throwing something over the barrier. (Why would police even respond to such a report? If I called and said I was being stabbed to death, they would say, “Okay, we’ll send an officer out in an hour or two.”) I said I was throwing chicken over the wall to lure a dog to the trap. One of the officers went to look over the wall at the trap. In order to make myself heard over the roar of the freeway, I kind of yelled at him: “Don’t peek over the wall! It’s very important that the dog not see you.” This really pissed him off, but he didn’t look. He said, “Get back in your car and wait there until the dog goes in the trap!” Which didn’t even make any sense because I couldn’t see through the concrete barrier to see if the dog was in the trap. But I got in my car just so he would leave. Stephanie reported that Rui was working her way up the median strip, closer and closer to the trap. She got one foot in, two feet in, all four feet in the trap. Then, just as she was about to step on the trigger plate, something spooked her, and she ran south along the strip of grass. I didn’t see what spooked her, but it had to be a Good Samaritan pulling over on the shoulder to help her. Rui couldn’t possibly have known I was on the other side of the concrete barrier. As she ran south, Judy drove around on the freeway to get south of her. Judy watched as Rui came to the end of the grass. She was straddling the concrete barrier, seeming to get ready to jump onto one section of the freeway or the other, which would have been a disaster either way. Instead, she turned and headed north again, which was a huge relief. Before she could get far, a Good Samaritan pulled over and got out of her car, moving toward Rui. This was exactly what we didn’t want to happen. In this case, Rui just happened to run into a small patch of blackberries against the concrete wall, and she got herself stuck. The woman ran up and got a hand on Rui, keeping her pinned in the blackberries. Judy came up quickly with a slip lead, and put it on Rui for safety. The owners pulled up a few minutes later and secured her. They carried her to their car.

People with decades of experience and a $14,000 drone and two traps and a wildlife camera were working on a coordinated plan to help Rui, and it almost worked until a Good Samaritan stepped in to help and interrupted Rui just as she was about to be trapped. Then, another Good Samaritan did exactly what you should never do, moving toward a dog on the shoulder of the freeway, and she got lucky when Rui randomly wedged herself into the blackberries. If she had reversed course or veered just a little to the side, she probably would have died. Luckily, the Good Samaritan saved Rui’s life. I wanted to tell the woman that she did exactly the wrong thing, but I didn’t think my point would have been well received. All’s well that ends well.

When I first started doing this work as a volunteer, 17 years ago, Missing Pet Partnership was tasked with catching a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy named Sophie. She was in the woods near Dash Point Road, which is a continuation of Highway 509. The speed limit varies from 25 to 45, and people often drive much faster. The woods where Sophie liked to hang out was a summer camp that was empty at the time. The recovery effort was planned for weeks, and a special net suspended by electromagnets from a frame was set up so it could drop on Sophie at that flip of a switch. Sophie was fed near this frame for many days before the planned trapping event. On the night we were going to trap her, we fed her a dinner with sedatives in it, on the advice of a veterinarian. We had four teams of three ready to move in from all angles. We had video cameras watching her. I was supposed to be with a team where I was the tackler, who would pounce on Sophie once she was in the net, to make sure she didn’t wriggle out. One person was supposed to be with me, with a radio, for communication and coordination. The veterinarian was on hand in case she was needed, and was the third member of my team. At the scheduled go time, Sophie was eating the plates of food leading up to the net area, and she seemed a bit drowsy, and unaware that 15 people were planning her capture. I got into position, apparently having missed that I was supposed to meet my team in the headquarters. They were waiting for me there as I was waiting for them in the hiding spot near the net. I was on the north, without any communication. A three-person team was moving into position on the east side, and a three-person team was getting ready on the west. As they were moving into position, one of their team stepped on a small branch and it cracked. It probably wasn’t very loud, but it seemed like a gunshot in that silence. Sophie suddenly became alert as a jolt of adrenaline countered the sedative. She stumbled into the woods to the south. Everyone turned on their flashlights, and I could hear the coordinator at headquarters, who had been watching on the cameras, yelling, “Go! Move in!” I was closest, but it was a zoo. A dog can almost always run faster than a person, especially through woods and brush. At one point, the bank became so steep that I had to climb a tree to get up it. As people were crashing through the woods after Sophie, I took a shortcut through some yards, trying to move quietly along the grass so Sophie wouldn’t hear me coming. I don’t know why I turned around at that moment, but I did, and Sophie was right behind me. She could have run into the woods, or to the north where there was no fence. She happened to choose to run southwest, and she lunged at a wooden fence, but couldn’t make it over. I tackled her, and held on tight. After a little squirming, she relaxed and let me hold her. Eventually, more people from the chase team caught up to us, and we secured her.

We had an elaborate plan and a custom trap to catch Sophie. None of our plans involved chasing her into the woods. Running after her was a bad idea, and the most likely outcome would have been that we would chase her onto Dash Point Road where she would be running in panic. It was basically luck that she ran southwest instead of north or east in that yard. It was an amazing feeling to have caught Sophie, the big puppy, after she had been in the woods for many weeks. I knew right from the start, as soon as I started running after her, that it was the wrong thing to do, and I just hoped I would get lucky, which I did. Catching Sophie basically launched me on my career, and I have helped thousands of dogs since then. Knowing what I know now, I never would have chased her like I did. If she had escaped me, if she had turned right instead of left, if she had run onto the busy road and died, maybe I would have abandoned the pursuit of helping lost pets.

Several years ago, I went to help a dog named Bella, who had been ejected from a vehicle crash on I-90 in North Bend. She had been seen in the area, near the freeway, so I loaded my trap into the car to go help her. When I got to the area, after a few minutes of looking, I saw her in a vacant lot, across the frontage road from the freeway. The vehicle crash had knocked the fence down, and she could easily get on the freeway if she was spooked. I followed her from my car, waiting for her to settle somewhere so that I could set the trap without spooking her. I was confident I could catch her. The trouble was that she was in a vacant lot without much vegetation, and people driving by kept pulling over and wanting to help her. I couldn’t get her to settle in a spot because people with good intentions kept interfering. This went on for about twenty minutes until she worked her way over to the intersection of the main road and the freeway, where the on ramp and off ramp formed an intersection. Bella was in the intersection, with cars pulled over on every side of her. They were all trying to coax her, the way people do. She started to run each direction, but was blocked by a person near their car. She finally ran up the off ramp, onto the freeway, where no one could follow. I drove as fast as I could, up the freeway to the east, to the next exit, and then back to the west. By the time I reached her, it was too late. She had been hit. I pulled over onto the shoulder near her. She was in the middle lane of I-90, where the speed limit was 70 miles an hour, and there was a curve so people couldn’t see too far ahead. I saw a gap in traffic, and I ran out to pick up her body before she could get hit again. She was gone. She was a beautiful, sweet pit bull, and I was so close to saving her, but I was forced to watch people with good intentions do all the wrong things as they chased her to her death.

Recently, Tino and I were asked to search for Stevie in Centralia. She had just been adopted, and the rescue nonprofit that had fostered her and gotten her spayed had provided a GPS tracker. The adopter said she didn’t want the GPS on. She took Stevie home, and then lost her before she even got in the house. Stevie ran off dragging a leash. She was seen running on the freeway. She ran against traffic over a six-mile stretch. She also crossed all of the lanes of I-5 in a zone where it was 70 MPH. The last place she was seen was at an off-ramp near some restaurants. Tino and I started tracking her the next day. We followed her scent for three hours, down a trail between a pond and the freeway, under the freeway, through a park, and to an off-ramp where a person there said she had passed by that spot twenty minutes before we got there. I looked around for her and didn’t see her. I didn’t want her to feel like she was being chased. Tino and I continued tracking, but the scent trail led to a busy street that she seemed to have crossed, or perhaps she was even running in the street. We lost the scent trail and also I had to get back home. There were some sightings over the next two weeks, and then she was photographed at the fairgrounds. She is about 50 pounds and she has a distinctive pattern in her black and white fur, so it was definitely her. Tino and I came the next day, February 1st, to start tracking her again. The fairgrounds were near the train tracks, and Stevie could have gone basically any direction.

Tino and I started at the point where she had been photographed. Tino tracked in a loop around the pavilions and horse stalls. Everything was empty, but one of the pavilions was being used to store boats and RVs in the off-season. As we tracked the scent, I saw footprints on the concrete left after Stevie had walked through some water. She had to be close because the prints had not dried out. Tino led me around a corner, and there she was. She saw us and started walking the other way. I stopped Tino from tracking because I wanted Stevie to feel safe and stick around. The fosters, who had Stevie for two months, waited in their car in the parking lot, hoping she would come out to them, but she stayed hidden. We set up a trap and two wildlife cameras, hoping she would go in or at least appear on camera.

Over the next six days, we received many sightings of Stevie in and near the fairgrounds. D. D. Ponder has trapped many stray dogs and is an expert at lost dog behavior and trapping. She brought her trap to the fairgrounds, so we had two traps and four cameras. On the night of the 6th, Stevie showed up at both of the traps, which were rigged to stay open so she could get used to them. No one was available to go get her if she was trapped, so they weren’t set to close on that night. The next night, a trap was set to close if triggered. D. D. and the fosters were nearby so they could get to the trap if Stevie went in. She showed up on one camera at one of the traps, and then we could see her at the second trap. After circling a bit, she went in the trap! She was safe after three weeks and after running for miles on the freeway. Later, once she was safe at the fosters’ home, D. D. noticed that Stevie was missing her entire tail and most of her right ear! It appears she may have tangled with some coyotes. She must have been in horrible pain. A team of professionals and volunteers saved Stevie’s life by understanding the behavior of lost and stray dogs and by using traps and cameras effectively. Stevie was so freaked out by people with good intentions chasing her and trying to help her that she was willing to run on the freeway to get away from people. She was pushed into an area where it appears she was attacked by a couple of coyotes who injured her severely. In these situations, dogs become so afraid of humans with good intentions that they will run to their death rather than let themselves get caught. We were all so happy and relieved that we could catch Stevie in time. It’s looking like she will make a full recovery, and the fosters, who invested so many days trying to help her when she was lost, have decided to adopt her.

If you see a dog that is stray or lost, of course you would want to help. If the lost dog comes right to you, that’s great! It should be easy to get that dog to safety. If the dog shows any signs of being in flight mode, you don’t want the dog to even know you see her. Look to the side and pretend you don’t see her. Anyone with a smartphone can jump onto the Facebook group Lost Dogs of King County and get advice from Lily Burns about the best way to help that dog. The LDKC Facebook group has a companion web page with guides to the best ways to help a lost or stray dog. If You See a Stray Dog - Lost Dogs of King County If I’m not already busy helping a lost cat or dog, chances are that I will come and help the dog that you see running around. I have safely trapped more than a thousand dogs, including Tino and Raphael, my current search dogs. Of course, you can always call Animal Control. They may be able to help, but they might be busy with other calls. It is very important that you don’t chase that dog. Even if you successfully chased down a lost dog at some point in the past, you need to realize that you just got lucky when you caught that dog. Never chase a lost or stray dog. Of course, if you don’t have a lot of experience with helping lost and stray dogs, how are you supposed to know that the methods you would instinctively use are probably exactly what you should never do? Well, that’s why I wanted to share these stories. Now you know, and you can spread the word to others about the best ways to help lost dogs.

I was happy with Raven’s Whistle GPS tracker. I was not happy that Tractive bought Whistle earlier this year. Because I still had time left on my Whistle GPS subscription, Tractive sent me one of their units to replace the one I had. I wasn’t expecting it to work because the Tractive unit I had a few years ago was junk, worthless, as I reported in a previous review. For the past two months, the new unit has worked fairly well. Consumer Reports gives Tractive its highest rating, higher than all of the other brands available.

In the 2 months that Raven has been wearing her Tractive unit, she has been swimming and she has wrestled with the big dogs. It doesn’t show any sign of wear, and her craziness hasn’t harmed the function of it. Sometimes when I have tested it, it has been slow to give me a location, sometimes taking as long as five minutes. If she was really lost, five minutes is enough time for a dog to get into serious trouble. I would be happier if it found the location fast every time.

Battery life is adequate, usually lasting a week. I don’t think I have ever gotten the 14 days of battery life they say is possible. Testing the sound capability, I could barely hear it warbling when I was three feet away in a quiet room. The sound function would definitely not help you zero in on your dog if she was lost. It might help locate the tracker on the ground if it fell off and was covered by leaves. The light on the collar is fairly bright, and I could see that being helpful in locating a dog at night.

This unit has health monitoring, theoretically, which I don’t think is really helpful. It says it tells you your dog’s activity level. Dogs sleep all day, fortunately for us humans. It basically says Raven was more active this day than that day, but it’s not like she is fat and needs to get her steps in. It tells me her heart rate, when she is resting. I doubt the usefulness and the accuracy of that. If you want a collar device to monitor the health of your dog, I don’t think this unit is very helpful or enlightening. It feels like they just want another gimmick to hook people with. I would only recommend this tracker for its location features, and I don’t think the health monitoring would be worth choosing this brand over some other brand.

Recently, I have had several missing cat cases that we worked where the owner of the lost cat was able to show me the usual territory of their cat, or where their cat went on the day their tracker fell off. This information has been helpful in planning the search. I assume lots of people find their lost cats using Tractive trackers, and don’t need our services because the tracker worked. If I had an outdoor cat, I would do everything I could to convert that cat to indoor only. Indoor cats live twice as long as outdoor access cats. Also, outdoor cats kill billions of songbirds every year, which is totally unnecessary. If I couldn’t keep my cat indoors, because he just wouldn’t quit trying to escape, then I would definitely put a Tractive unit on him. They make one for cats, which is smaller than the dog unit.

I think it is very unlikely that any of my five dogs would go missing and need a GPS tracker. Last year, there was one time when Tino and I were out on a search in Issaquah. I had to get over a fence, so I let go of Tino’s leash for a moment. Normally, Tino stays near me if I drop his leash. If he is pulling hard, and he knocks me down, which happens often enough, and I let go of the leash, his default behavior is to come right back to me. It’s like he’s pulling to try to knock me down, and once his mission is accomplished, he comes back to admire his handiwork, or laugh at me. Of course, I hold on tight to his leash if we are near a road, but in yards or woods or fields, I don’t worry about him taking off. On this day, something caught his attention, probably a deer, and he took off after it. He was out of sight in the woods for three long minutes, not coming back when I called. For those three minutes, I really regretted not having a GPS tracker on him. That’s why I now have a tracker on him, for those rare instances.

I would be very happy if every single dog and cat in the world wore a GPS tracker. I wish there were GPS trackers on every pet, and surveillance cameras on every house, and no cat or dog would ever go missing, and then I could retire, and just go hiking with my dogs. When I first got Fozzie, 13 years ago, he was a little escape artist, and he liked to dash out the door and sprint around the neighborhood. He was fast. After his first escape, I put a Tagg tracker on him, and it worked like a charm in his 8 subsequent escapes over the next year. After that, he settled down and never ran off again. That Tagg tracker worked every time, and it was all I needed. The Tagg company was bought by Whistle, and for the first few years, Whistle trackers were not very good, certainly not as good as the Tagg unit had been. 13 years after Tagg had a perfectly functional GPS tracking device, Tractive is not any better at finding a lost dog. They keep adding features, like lights, sounds, health monitoring, and a completely useless gamification of their app. As far as finding your dog, today’s trackers are not any better than they were 13 years ago. While I do recommend the Tractive tracker for your dog or cat, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the company. It works, but it seems like it ought to be so much better after all these years. We are on the verge of quantum computing, clean and cheap fusion energy, and Artificial Superintelligence, but my dog’s tracking GPS is just adequate. If I think of how my current iPhone is compared to my iPhone 13 years ago, it is a world of difference. I want a collar device for my dog that would be like my Apple Watch, allowing me to call her on the phone, talk to her, listen to her environment, maybe even send me video. It would be nice, although probably unnecessary, if Raven had a device that could send me an EKG, like my Apple Watch can generate. All I can say about the Tractive unit is that it does work to locate my dog, most of the time, and I would recommend it. I paid $208 for Tino’s unit, plus a year of service, which is a good value for my peace of mind. It could save my dog’s life someday, in which case I would definitely say it was worth the price. This location technology is not as reliable as it should be, but it is better than nothing.

The kennel trap will capture almost any dog. Some dogs won’t go in the regular 48 inch trap or the 60 inch trap because it seems too confining, or because they already tried to go in one of those traps, triggered it too early, and then got out. Once a dog knows something is a trap, he probably won’t go in. Although the kennel trap works almost every time, it is cumbersome to transport and to set properly. The fastest I ever set it up by myself was half an hour. This trap has been beat up, including one time when we accidentally caught a bear. It takes a little extra care to make sure it is set right. The video below is longish, but it should answer most of your questions. Please watch all the videos here and read all of the instructions because you will probably only get one chance to catch a dog with the kennel trap. If you make a mistake, you might not ever be able to catch that dog with any sort of trap.

Parts list:

6 large panels.

12 clamps, plus a few spares.

Red bag with tools and parts.

Zip ties.

Battery.

Light switch with lead to magnetic plate.

Tarp to cover.

Duct tape for setting the electric optical switch.

Three wooden boards to hold up the tarp.

Metal stakes.

Various bungee cords.

Wildlife camera, usually separate.

Wooden stake to stop the door from being pushed out of the frame.

Solar charger.

Hammer.

Vienna sausage or rotisserie chicken.

A standard size pickup truck will transport the trap just fine. In the past, I had a car with a roof rack, and I was able to put the six panels on top and secure them with ropes and bungee cords. Not ideal but workable.

In the case of Annabelle, we trapped her but she was small and strong, and she escaped by pushing hard, with her head, at the bottom corner of the door, forcing the door out of the frame far enough so that she could squeeze through. After that, we start putting a stake on the outside of the door, at the bottom corner, so a dog couldn’t force the door out of the frame.

Tips:

1. We have had at least one dog climb out of the trap, so it’s a good idea to put a tarp over the top, to trap to prevent this.

2. Try to place the trap on even ground. If there is a slope, put the door on the downhill side, to help the door close better.

3. I like to place a camera inside the trap, on the back wall, at about dog height, looking out the door. Ideally, you would use two or three cameras, so you can see the dog approaching and see how he behaves near the trap.

4. Some dogs will just watch you assemble the trap and then walk right in. Other dogs can take days to get comfortable with the trap and go in.

5. Try to have people on hand or nearby when the dog goes in the trap, to make sure he doesn’t escape.

6. Once the dog goes in the trap, the best practice is to squeeze into the trap with a folded 48 F trap, set it up, and then scoot the trapped dog into the smaller trap for transport.

7. Be sure to get permission from the property owner.

8. Test the trap to make sure it closes properly and the door doesn’t bounce. DO NOT test the trap if the lost dog is watching you.

9. You will probably want to bring a larger hammer, wire cutters, a crescent wrench, and extra zip ties.

10. The battery should be set on a wooden board if it is going to be set up for a long time. If the dog isn’t going to go in right away, or you want to wait until you have personnel on hand, you can unhook the battery so it doesn’t drain, and then hook up the battery once you are ready to go. These batteries may stop working, and you might have to go buy a new one at an auto parts store. Marine batteries seem to work best.

11. Use Calming Signals once the dog is trapped.

12. Crows can be a problem because they will come and steal all of the food in a matter of minutes. Yellowjackets may be an issue, because they could attack the dog you are trying to catch. Setting the trap to close at night can defeat crows and yellowjackets.

13. Be sure the joint next to the door is at the correct angle, as discussed in the videos.

Make sure the joint next to the door latch is at the correct angle.

If you have any questions about using the trap, be sure to ask. UselessBaySanctuary@gmail.com

I have this fear, this nightmare, that Tino suddenly disappears. I’m sure it’s because of the work we do. A woman went to enjoy the mountains with her Husky, like she had many times in the past. She was with her beloved dog, who was splashing in the creek, happy. She saw him there, then she looked downstream, and moments later, she looked upstream and he wasn’t there. She immediately started looking for him, but she never found him. Tino and I searched for this dog, later, and we found footprints suggesting he was chasing elk, but the missing dog went through the creek several times, making it hard for us to track. His owner did nothing wrong, but one day her dog just vanished. Over the past 17 years, we have had many cases where the owner of the cat or dog did everything right, and they lost their beloved family member in spite of all the precautions. If I think about it logically, the chances of losing Tino are very small, because of the precautions I take. Still, in spite of all of my knowledge and experience and precautions, I did lose Viktor, through an unlikely combination of circumstances, and it took me a week to get him back. Drones weren’t common when I lost Viktor, but I think one could have helped.

If one of my dogs was missing, I would use every technique or tool I could think of to find him, and I would absolutely use a drone if one was available. Of course, I would use my search dog, Tino, to track down whichever dog was missing. If Tino was missing, I would get Raven on it, and I have great confidence that she would do well. In most of the cases where one of my scent trailing dogs—Kelsy, Fozzie, Tino, or Raven—did not track up to the location of the missing dog, the primary reason was that we hit private property lines and couldn’t get permission to continue. A stray dog can run through someone’s yard, but if we did that, following the scent trail, we could run into serious trouble. That is the main reason I would want the services of a drone pilot. I’m not an expert on using drones, but in the many situations where I have witnessed them working, they were able to see onto private property without instigating any crisis with the homeowners. Usually, the homeowner would have no idea the drone was even there. A large man with a large German Shepherd mix running through the yard can be quite alarming if someone isn’t expecting it. A search dog can also be stopped by rivers and creeks, by rough terrain, by freeways, and sometimes by heat or harsh weather.

A drone does some things well, and a search dog does other things well. One is not a replacement for the other. Each one has its uses. There are cases where a search dog could succeed while a drone would have virtually no chance. Tino and I searched for a blind dog, who was prone to seizures. She had gone missing in a forest, and the more time that passed without her medication, the less chance she would survive. By the time we got there, the drone had already searched and found nothing. Tino was presented with a scent article and he immediately took off on a strong scent. The path curled around through the trees and along a trail, and then Tino pulled me right to the dog. She looked like she was sleeping under the ferns. She did not respond to the sound of our approach. I told Tino he had done a great job, and asked him to wait, a little ways away. Tino’s attitude or demeanor, something about him, told me that the lost dog had not survived. She was cold, and I could not find a pulse. It appeared she had died many hours earlier, if not days earlier. The drone had searched that area, and the owners of the dog had walked right by her many times. If you were more than three feet away, she was completely hidden in the ferns. She was not concealed from the search dog’s nose. In this case, and in similar cases, the lost dog absolutely would never have been found without the search dog’s nose. People had searched for days, and Tino found her in five minutes. Unfortunately, too late.

Tino and I searched for a German Shepherd in Issaquah. The dog had been seen many times, but not for a few days. The drone had searched for her earlier, and hadn’t found her. Tino started on the scent trail, and he picked up a reasonably good scent. As we were searching, looping around and going through peoples’ yards, with permission, Stephanie Seek arrived and launched her drone to search again. Stephanie’s drone is a technical marvel, and also very expensive. It sees in regular light and infrared light at the same time, and Stephanie sees both views on her screen. When she detects a heat signature, she can look at the visible light video and see what sort of animal it is. After Tino and I had searched for about a mile, Stephanie messaged that she had located what she believed was a German Shepherd, but the dog was partially obscured by foliage. We headed back with the owner to check it out. I put Tino in the car and went to the location of the sighting. Stephanie was able to guide us right to the dog. When we got there, the owner confirmed it was her dog! As often happens in these situations, the dog did not immediately come to her. I instructed the owner on how to use calming signals, and to wait for the dog to come to her when she was ready. Eventually, the German Shepherd caught the scent of her owner, and she came right over, happy to be safe. The area she was found was behind a fence and between two forks of the creek. Depending on how she got there, whether she waded through the creek at some point, Tino may or may not have been able to track right to her.

It would be ideal if the search dog could work at the same time as the drone, in most cases. That usually doesn’t happen because Stephanie and I are both very busy, trying to keep up with the demand and find all the pets we can. Hundreds of cats and dogs go missing every day. If my dog was missing, in most cases, I would contact Stephanie Seek very early in the search, to at least see if it was possible to get on her schedule. If there were circumstances where my lost dog couldn’t be found by a drone, if for example Fozzie was hiding under a car, or if Fozzie had been taken by a coyote in spite of all of my precautions against predators, I wouldn’t know that ahead of time. I wouldn’t be able to know, if my dog was lost, if the circumstances would favor the search dog or the drone, or neither. If my lost dog was at the shelter, or had been picked up by a person in a car, then neither the drone nor the search dog would work. Probably posters and social media would be the best tools for that scenario. If one of my dogs was missing, I would use every tool available to me if the conditions were right for each tool’s strengths.

If I had lost a cat, I wouldn’t be so quick to think of a drone. Cats usually hide under things. When I think of all the cats my dogs have found over the years, and where we found them, I can’t think of a single instance where the cat was simply out in the open where a drone would have spotted it. Except for that one cat who was just sitting on his owners front porch, waiting to be let in, after we had driven an hour to search for him with the search dog. Also, they are smaller, and there are rabbits everywhere, so a cat could be considerable harder to find with a drone even if the cat wasn’t hiding under a car or under a deck or a shed. Lost cats have been found with drones, in a few cases, and I don’t think it would hurt to try a drone for a lost cat. If a cat was stuck up in a tree, a drone might be just the right thing. I am not an expert on drones, so you would have to check with the drone pilot, but I think Stephanie would probably agree that a drone is not the best tool for a lost cat, usually.

If you would like to deploy a drone for your lost pet, please be aware that there are way more scammers out there than actual drone pilots. If you have posted about your lost cat or dog on social media, and someone suggests a service with a drone, it is very likely they will be directing you to a scam site. Most of these scammers don’t even live in the United States, it seems. There appear to be algorithms that search for postings for lost pets, and then a bot generates a message appearing to come from an actual person, which says, “I used this drone service and they found my lost dog fast.” Other than Stephanie, I have heard of two or three local drone pilots with good equipment. Be sure that you are speaking to an actual, specific person, and take some time to check them out. If they say they have drones all over the country and they can deploy one to your location right away, as soon as you send a payment, it’s probably fake.

Should you buy a drone to look for your lost pet? Some people do. If you were thinking of buying a drone anyway, then it wouldn’t hurt to get one to search for your dog or cat. However, the thermal drones that really work for lost pets are very expensive, probably more than $10,000. Given the likelihood that you might crash the drone, I think you would be better off requesting an experienced drone pilot. Also, even though drones are designed to be easy to fly, and most operations are automatic, the drone pilot knows when and where to use the drone for the best chance of success. Also, drones are not allowed in some places, such as near airports, in National Parks, or over Wildlife Preserves. Other environments, such as crowded and busy urban areas, may be too chaotic for the thermal drone. If your pet is missing, you need to focus on the deploying all the tools and techniques for finding your dog or cat, and your time would not be well spent becoming an expert on drones. You would be better off enlisting an expert.

A few weeks ago, I lost Tino. I was going to take Raven out for a walk and I called Tino and he didn’t come. Every time I call Tino‘s name inside the house he shows up within several seconds. That is, if he wasn’t already standing right beside me in the first place. I called for him three times and I didn’t get any response. I looked all around the house in the usual places where he might be. I started to wonder if maybe he had an undiagnosed heart condition and he had crawled under a table and died or something. I have three cameras inside the house and four cameras outside the house. I started frantically searching through the videos and pictures to see when he last showed up. I saw him coming into the house with me after our morning walk but then he didn’t show up on a camera after that . After searching all the places that he could be or might be, I started searching the places where it would be impossible for him to be. He had gone through a door while someone was carrying a box and didn’t see he was behind them. Then he had gone through a second door into another room and the door just closed itself behind him so he was trapped. Tino is the barkiest, loudest dog in the world. I know his giant ears could hear me frantically calling for him. He never said a peep, and he let me almost die of a heart attack, thinking i had lost him. Just before we found him, I was seriously thinking of putting out a call for help, of calling every friend or volunteer I could possibly think of to help me find him. I definitely would have used a drone if he had actually been lost, and not just stuck in another room of the house.

If your dog is missing in the Seattle area, you may want to contact Stephanie Seek and see if she can help. http://seekandrescue.org/book

Seek and Rescue is a 501c3 nonprofit charity.

The 2008 Prius has gone to the salvage yard. She had 213,000 miles on her. I drove the Prius from the summer of 2020 to October 2025 as my work vehicle. She got about 43 miles per gallon, on average, which was great. The back cargo area, with the back seats folded down, had excellent room for things like traps and dogs. After catching a dog, I could lift the dog in the trap into the back of the Prius, with room for other equipment as well.

She got the name RatMobile because rodents started living in the back where the spare tire was stored. I could sometimes hear them chewing on things. They chewed on the air conditioning somehow, necessitating a $3,000 repair. The rodents stored cherry pits and hazelnut shells in the engine compartment. When Tino and I would head out for a search, I would say, “To the RatMobile.”

One of the great things about the Prius was that she had become sufficiently worn down that I really didn’t have to be that careful about taking care of her. Tino is not kind on cars. He’s just big. He broke off the rear view mirror, so I reattached it with superglue. But when he broke it off again, I just learned to manage without a rear view mirror. Surprisingly, the armrest upholstery survived years of Tino in relatively good condition. I remember a time when my speedometer was getting dim and I couldn’t figure out why. Well, the Prius speedometer and display is down in the dash, and you are actually looking at it in a mirror. The little well where the display was had accumulated so much fur from Tino that it was dimming the display. Once I figured that out, I cleaned it out periodically. The cargo area of the Prius has contained the bodies of deceased dogs I picked up from the freeway, as well as dogs I captured who were in the trap. The back of the Prius has had every sort of bodily fluid you can imagine from a dog. I had a large mat in the back covering the whole area, so I could pull it out and hose it off. Although I never abused the Prius, she had reached that stage where you didn’t really have to be too concerned about taking care of the interior because it’s not like it would have reduced the resale value.

I would have been happy to keep driving the Prius, except I was rear-ended by a hit and run driver. It was really a minor collision, but because he was driving a pickup, the Prius sustained a lot of damage while the pickup probably didn’t have a scratch. The Prius was still drivable, but the cost to fix the damage was more than the value of the car. So, it was time to get a new used car.

After the accident, every warning light on the dash came on and stayed on. I assume this was just because something had been jarred loose, and probably not because all of those systems failed at the same time. She drove just the same as before the accident. Recently, one more warning light came on. It was a red triangle with an exclamation point in it. I had to look it up because I didn’t know what that meant. It is known as “The Red Triangle of Death.” You are not supposed to drive the car after that light comes on because the car could suddenly have a catastrophic failure that could cause permanent damage to the engine. The RatMobile didn’t drive any differently after receiving the Red Triangle of Death, but now she is gone to the salvage yard just because fixing her up would have cost more than her resale value.

She was a pleasure to drive during the five years she was my work vehicle. She went on many great adventures all over Western Washington, including our trip to Useless Bay this summer. She never let us down. She was filled with memories of work and play and just having my working dog, Mu or Tino, there by my side.

I am a little concerned for the rodent family, assuming they are still in there somewhere. I hope they learn to get along in the salvage yard okay, and that they can fully enjoy the RatMobile as she sits in her final resting place.

Insurance is not a luxury. For many people and animals, insurance can be a matter of life or death. For the past couple of years, I have been dealing with a health issue affecting more than 10 million people in the United States: atrial fibrillation. I probably would not be aware I even had it except that my Apple Watch told me about it. My watch can generate an EKG that shows the pattern of my heartbeats. I had one complicated, expensive surgical procedure, which didn’t fix it, and then a slightly different procedure, which seems to have worked. My heart is normal now, and the doctor says I don’t have to take the medication any more. After the first procedure, I received a notification that the whole process cost $250,000, which insurance paid. I researched how healthcare is paid for in America, which is just ridiculous. In reality, the procedure may have cost around $50,000, but they bill insurance for $250,000 just to get paid the actual $50,000? I don’t understand and I don’t think I’m supposed to understand. At any rate, I could not have afforded $250,000 times two for the two procedures, or even $50,000 times two. The trouble with atrial fibrillation is that it can cause someone to have a stroke, when blood pools in the heart and clots form. A stroke could have killed me, or, even worse, it could have left me disabled for the rest of my life. Without insurance, it is very possible that my life would be over, or I could not continue to find lost pets and work with my search dogs.

Tino is a robust, very healthy dog, full of life, full of energy, working hard every week to find lost dogs. On April 26th, at 10:30 AM, out of the blue, he started trying to vomit without being able to. His stomach had flipped over, which is a thing that happens to large dogs with deep chests. I was able to get him into emergency surgery, fortunately, and since they fixed him, he has been back at work, good as new, playing with Raphael and Raven, like a normal dog. His surgery and care cost $12,000, which I did not have saved up and in reserve for such an occasion. His insurance, Healthy Paws, paid over $9,000. Also, very generous people donated thousands to Tino’s care, allowing me to save his life and keep him working and playing. Mostly, it was Tino’s Healthy Paws insurance that saved his life. Without it, he might have died that day.

Why would I tell people to avoid Healthy Paws insurance if it saved Tino’s life? Well, a couple of weeks ago, they told me that the monthly premium for Fozzie’s insurance was going to be increased from $142 per month, which seems pretty high already, to $737 per month, which is ridiculous, and I obviously can’t afford. Basically, they have raised his rate to an unaffordable amount, which will cause me to drop his coverage, which allows Healthy Paws to simply pocket all the money I have paid them for eight years and avoid paying for any veterinary procedures. Fozzie is 13, and entering the time of his life when he is most likely to rack up some very expensive vet bills. If something happens to Fozzie, like cancer, am I supposed to simply let him die because I can no longer afford health insurance for him? Healthy Paws thinks so. Over the past 8 years, I have paid about $8,000 for Fozzie’s insurance, all together. Healthy Paws is going to simply pocket that $8,000 and not be on the hook for any vet expenses at the time of Fozzie’s life when he most needs insurance. Further, because he is 13 years old, no other pet insurance company will take him on. A couple of days ago, Healthy Paws told me Tino’s insurance will go from $84 per month to $330 per month. I’m sure Mu’s insurance and Sky’s insurance will also rise to some unaffordable amounts. If Fozzie is $737 per month, Tino is $330 per month, and let’s say they raise Mu and Sky to roughly $500 per month, that’s $2,000 per month just for my dogs’ health insurance. I simply can’t afford that. They know it. They are effectively canceling my insurance and saying, “Oh, we’re so sorry, but rising costs, etc.”. Vet costs didn’t go up 500% overnight. It’s a scam. It is probably illegal, but what am I going to do about it? Report them to the insurance commissioner? I have, but that will take time, and I will probably lose my insurance before that complaint is resolved.

It’s not just me they are targeting. One person I know had Healthy Paws raise their rates from $159.84 per month to $1012.65 per month for one dog, and the other dog was raised from $147.25 to $315.40. Another person I know had Healthy Paws raise her rate from $250 per month to $1022 per month. She cannot afford to pay more. If Healthy Paws raised your rate, please comment below. It appears Healthy Paws is targeting dogs that have paid years of premiums totaling thousands of dollars, and canceling (raising the rate so high it is the equivalent of canceling) these mature policies before these dogs enter the years when they are most likely to need insurance. It is theft, pure and simple, but hidden behind numbers and charts and excuses.

A long time ago, when I was disappointed by a previous pet health insurance company, I decided I would take whatever amount I would be paying for pet health insurance, and put that into a savings account. It would be available for whatever vet bills came up in the coming years. It was a great idea, except that I didn’t have the discipline to leave that savings account alone. I kept robbing from that account when bills piled up. It was too tempting to use that money. I ended up going back to a health insurance company because when you buy health insurance for your dog, you know you have to keep up the payments or you lose the insurance and you lose all the value you have built up in that account. That really paid off for Tino, saving his life when I was faced with a $12,000 vet bill. Of the more than $9,000 they paid, most of that was really my money. I had paid in at least $6,000 over the years that I had insurance for Tino. It was basically a forced savings account, and the insurance company had the opportunity to invest my money and make profits in the meantime, while they held onto my money. That’s how insurance is supposed to work: you pay into the account for years when you don’t need it in order to have that insurance there when you likely will need it. I never imagined my insurance company would basically kick me off of my insurance so they could pocket years worth of premiums and avoid paying for upcoming health needs of my dogs.

In March of 2020, Healthy Paws was sued in a class action lawsuit claiming that they raised the rates of older dogs by unreasonable and unaffordable amounts, like they are doing now. As a result of that earlier suit, they were forced to repay $4.7 million to policyholders in Washington State. Why would they do the exact same thing again when they had to repay the money last time? Well, they were only forced to repay that money in certain states. As far as I can find, in my research, only Washington State forced them to repay $4.7 million. If they unethically gained tens of millions of dollars across the country by raising rates ridiculous amounts, and they only had to repay some money in Washington State, then it makes financial sense for Healthy Paws to go ahead and rip off their policyholders again, knowing they will likely get away with it in most cases, and only have to pay back a small fraction of what they gain unethically. Health insurance for pets is relative new, with fewer rules than health insurance for humans. The people at Healthy Paws have seized this opportunity to make millions in an unethical way, which is probably not strictly forbidden by the law. Or is prohibited but not consistently enforced. They have found a legal loophole to screw their policyholders and get away with it.

I wish I could tell you which pet health insurance company you should use, but it’s impossible for me to say. Probably, the people who founded Healthy Paws didn’t set out with the intention of defrauding their customers, but then they had to switch underwriters, and the company was sold to a new company, and someone had the bright idea of swindling their policyholders in a way that they would probably get away with, even if it wasn’t exactly legal. I hope you will just establish a savings account for your dogs and cats, and you will have the discipline to leave that money alone until you need it for your pets. I wish I had done that from the beginning, and I certainly wish I had never trusted Healthy Paws.

If Healthy Paws is raining your rates by 300% or more, please do file a complaint with the insurance commissioner. If you are looking for health insurance for your pet, and you can’t force yourself to just establish a savings account you won’t pilfer, definitely don’t use Healthy Paws. I hope that, in the future, nationwide regulations will prevent companies from doing what Healthy Paws is doing. It seems unlikely that any meaningful regulation will happen before 2028. Please let me know if Healthy Paws is trying to screw you, too.

The complaint I get most often is that people can’t reach me when they need my services. I agree this is a problem, and I have been trying to address it for years. I get more than 800 requests per year of people needing our services. Usually they want the search dog. We could probably do 250 searches per year if things worked out just right, but often the timing is difficult. We also have to contend with weather and travel time. A search dog is just not effective in warm temperatures, so the summer months restrict our availability. I can’t be gone from home more than nine or ten hours, which limits our service area. I want to help more people, but I just physically can’t.

One way that I could potentially help more people would be if I could simply refer them to someone else who provides the same service. The trouble is, there isn’t anyone else. I have trained other search dogs and handlers, but they have not developed into available services. It is a challenging business, to get a search dog trained and develop a good track record. I still hope to train more people and dogs, and I hope in the future there will be more people doing what Tino and Raphael and I do.

The main way I have tried to align the demand with the availability is to offer information when I can’t help in person. Our web page, which could use some improvement, contains a wealth of information about how to find your lost dog or cat. In addition, this newsletter contains more than 250 articles with How-to advice and examples and stories of how cats and dogs were successfully recovered. I understand that, when your dog or cat is missing, it can be difficult to sort through all of this information to find what best fits your situation. I am working on improving that. If you need help and want to find the information that best fits your needs, try using the search function for the SubStack articles to find the stories most appropriate for your needs.

The best way to make sure I can help everyone who needs our services is to decrease the demand. I have been trying that from the very beginning. For 17 years, I have promoted loss prevention. It is much easier to prevent a cat or dog from going missing than to find them after they are lost, in most cases. I have written at least 10 articles for this newsletter about loss prevention. My web page has at least 5 sections on loss prevention. The Lost Dogs of King County Facebook group, which I started in 2014, has many posts about loss prevention. I haven’t found a way to break through with that advice, but I am still working on getting people to pay attention, trying to think of new ways.

One thing that would greatly improve my ability to respond to people is if I could somehow magically fix a problem that is out of my control. If anyone searches Google for an animal shelter in my area, the results list Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue as one of the top results. Obviously, we are not a shelter, and have never been one. I have tried, but Google offers no pathway to resolve this error in their algorithm. I get ten calls a day, minimum, of people wanting to surrender their pets to me. I simply don’t have the capacity to help with that type of situation. I wish I could. Most of the calls I get every day are for problems I can’t solve. All because Google won’t correct its search algorithm. I think the problem is that what I do is so uncommon that there is no category for me. They just lump me in with shelters because they don’t have any category of search dogs for lost cats and dogs. Whatever the reason for this problem, the results is that I usually don’t answer the phone because most of the calls I get are for issues that aren’t in my domain.

This problem of my lack of availability is entangled with one of the main problems that limits our effectiveness. In most of the cases where we do a search, we could have had a higher chance of success if we had started sooner. I get many requests for help days or weeks after we have passed the critical window for optimal search dog effectiveness. More than half of the searches we do are beyond that optimal window. I tell people that our chances of success have gone down because of the time that has passed, and often they want us to come out and try anyway. Our success rate, over 17 years of using search dogs, has been consistently about 25%. In just 25% of our searches do we pinpoint the current location of the lost cat or dog, or find their remains. That’s not to say we aren’t helpful in the other 75%, because we often provide a direction of travel, to guide the ongoing search, or we eliminate certain hiding places so the owners can concentrate the search elsewhere. When my cat went missing, I would definitely have hired a search dog, if one was available, even at a 25% chance of success.

Tino and Raphi and I could have a much higher success rate if we got started within the window where the search dog is most effective. If Tino started on the scent trail of every lost dog as soon as they went missing, he could find almost all of them. It would be a cake walk. I don’t recommend the search dog in the first hours after a dog went missing because most people are going to find their dogs without the help of a search dog, within the first six hours or so. If it has been 24 hours and you haven’t found your dog, then I would probably recommend the search dog at that point. On average, Tino gets started 3 or 4 days after the initial disappearance. This drags down his success rate because dogs can travel farther and because the scent trail gets weaker over time. Raphael has a wider window to work with. He is not following a specific scent trail of a particular cat. He is doing a grid search of the areas of highest probability. Cats usually don’t go too far. If Raphi and I started within the first three days of a cat going missing, we would have a much higher success rate. We have found cats, or their remains, up to three weeks after they went missing. Because there is the possibility of success in a longer time frame, many people use our services after the optimal window.

How can we help more people and help them in the optimal window for success? I don’t know. I am still looking into ways that we can try to fulfill these competing demands. I guess one way to help tackle the problem would be if people would spread the word about the possibility of using Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, along with the caveat that we might not be available. I realize that’s not the best advice, for people to contact me when I might not be able to help. My thinking is that, we can help some people more effectively even if we can’t increase the overall number of people we help. When the requests come in, I have to triage and respond to them in the order where I can do the most good for the most dogs and cats. If someone wants a search dog for a dog that has been missing two weeks, well, I wish we could help, but it’s probably not feasible. In so many cases, I think we could have helped if they had contacted us sooner, AND if we had been available at that time. If you know of someone whose cat or dog is missing, please tell them about Three Retrievers right away, so they can contact us and get in the queue. But please also warn them that I might not be able to respond if we are tied up with other cases.

If you asked for our help and you didn’t get a response, I am sorry. I try to respond to people even if I think the window for the search dog to be helpful has likely passed. Even then, I haven’t been able to get back to everyone. If I didn’t respond to you, I understand your frustration. I am working on being more effective and finding more ways to be helpful.

On April 26th, Tino nearly died when his stomach flipped over. Because I was with him when it happened, I was able to get him into emergency surgery fast enough that they could correct it before any permanent damage occurred. They also attached his stomach to his sides, gastropexy, to prevent this from happening again. Torsion happens with dogs with deep chests, and is often fatal. It is nearly always fatal if you don’t get immediate help. Because I knew about torsion, from reading Marley & Me, and other sources, I recognized it and got help fast. You should consider gastropexy for your dog if he is a large breed with a deep chest. Please ask your vet about it.

Since I got Tino back, I am just deeply happy every time I look at him, whether he is working, playing, or sleeping. I have more than 50,000 pictures and videos of Tino. If you do a search through the posts in this newsletter, you will find at least 50 articles describing his adventures. If you read the stories and look at the pictures, you might get the impression that I am crazy about him. Here are some pictures and videos from his ninth lap around the sun.

When your cat is missing, you don’t want to read a long article. You just want someone to come and find your cat. I understand that. I have lost cats in the past, and that’s why I do this work, because I have been in your situation. However, if you don’t understand how search dogs find cats, you are probably going to have unrealistic expectations of what a search dog can do. In almost every case, the owner of a lost cat insists they want my scent trailing dog, Tino, to search for their lost cat even though my cat-detection dog, Raphael, is the one who has the best chance of finding your cat. When I don’t want to use Tino for a search, it’s not because I want to deprive your cat of the best chance of being found. It’s exactly the opposite. I want to give your cat the greatest opportunity of coming home, and that is with Raphael, the cat-detection dog, in most cases. I absolutely love Tino, more than words can express, and he is an excellent search dog for certain types of searches. If I thought he was your cat’s best chance of coming home, I would absolutely use him. People seem to be offended or disappointed when I don’t use the scent-trailing dog to search for a lost cat. Based on my 17 years of finding lost pets, I’m going to use the search dogs that will have the best skills for your cat’s situation. Usually, that is Raphael, the cat-detection dog.

When people hear of a dog that finds lost cats, many people think the search dog is going to follow a scent trail to the hiding place where their cat has been ensconced, and they will know for sure where their cat is. Unfortunately, that is not how dogs find lost cats (in most cases), and it is important that you know why, before you hire a search dog to look for your missing cat.

Search dogs can and do follow the scent trails of missing dogs as they run in fear or go off exploring. Dogs tend to run many blocks or many miles when they disappear, and they leave a scent trail from point A to point B. Cats behave differently when they roam or flee. Even the most adventurous cat will usually stick to known paths and familiar territory. Mostly, cats move a little way, stop and leave a scent pool, move a little farther, and make another overlapping scent pool. What you are left with is not a scent trail from point A to point B, but a series of directionless pools of scent. Because individual cat trails are difficult or impossible to follow, we teach our cat detection dogs to find any cat they can. They are methodically searching areas of high probability, under our direction, looking for any cat they can find. The cat detection dog will become alert and excited when entering a pool of cat scent, and he will become excited and whine when he approaches the position of a hidden cat. If he finds a cat other than the one we are seeking, we tell him, “Good boy, go find another,” and give him a treat reward. Below are two pictures showing the history of a cat with a GPS tracking collar over a long period of time and a shorter period. As you can see in this graphic illustration, cats don’t usually leave scent trails from point A to point B. They usually leave a web of overlapping trails, or large directionless pools of scent.

Although the cat detection dog almost always finds some cats on a typical search, there’s about a 25% chance for the dog to directly find the cat we are seeking during the typical three-hour search. Most of the time, we leave the owner’s neighborhood without pinpointing the location of the cat we are looking for. This doesn’t mean the cat wasn’t there, necessarily, because we may have dislodged the cat from his hiding place when the search dog approached. It is never our intention to cause a cat to move out of her hiding place, and we approach the search in order to avoid making a cat run. Usually, we will do the search in a pattern such that, if the cat does move out of hiding, she will move closer to home. In about a quarter of our cases, the cat was found shortly after we searched, and this may be because the missing cat came out of hiding when the dog approached. (All our cat-detection dogs are friendly with cats, but the cat doesn’t know that.) Only in about 25% of our searches does the search dog find the hidden cat directly, or remains of a deceased cat.

In most cases, I would recommend that cat-detection dog as the best type of search dog to look for a cat. In some cases, for example, when an indoor only cat has escaped outdoors in the past day or two, it may be useful to use the scent-trailing dog first, to establish a direction of travel. We have used this method successfully on about fifteen occasions so far. The scent trailing dog directed us to a new area to concentrate our search, and then the cat-detection dog pinpointed the location of the cat. The scent trailing dog is usually not great at pinpointing a cat because the scent trail gets all tangled up and the direction of travel is no longer apparent. If your cat is indoor only and has just recently escaped, it may be best to use this two-dog approach.

Why would you want to hire a search dog if the odds of immediate success are only about 25%? There are several reasons, and you should consider these factors when deciding whether a search dog is worth the time and expense.

· Value of a thorough search on neighboring properties.

· Attract attention to the search.

· Know where cat is not.

· Find evidence of predation.

· The dog search is not a substitute for everything else that needs to be done.

· Other tools used during the search.

· The value of experience with many searches.

When your cat is missing, you suddenly get to know neighbors that you have lived near for years but you’ve never really talked to them. I know this from my personal experience of losing a cat. You want to search your neighbor’s property very thoroughly, but it feels awkward to say, “I wasn’t all that interested in talking to you for the last eleven years, but now I want to snoop around your tool shed.” Also, your neighbor may say he has checked his garage and your cat is not there when in fact your cat may be well hidden inside the garage. When you hire a cat-detection dog to do a thorough search, we are a disinterested third party. It feels less awkward for the cat owner and the property owner when a professional with a trained dog comes to do a thorough search. This way, it doesn’t feel like you are poking your nose in your neighbor’s business. We are just looking in those hiding places of highest probability. Also, the junk in one person’s back yard looks much the same as the junk in another person’s back yard, and we aren’t making any judgments about the property owner. We are just looking for the lost cat. Having this search done by professionals makes it easier for everyone.

Another value of the search dog team is that it draws attention to the case of your missing cat. At least once a month, there is a new flier for a lost pet on the telephone poles in my neighborhood. I stop to look because that is my area of interest, but most people just cruise on by these fliers without paying much attention. Hopefully, if your cat is missing, you have bombarded your neighborhood with fliers and signs so that no one within a three-block radius could possibly be unaware of your missing cat. Even if you have done a good job with posters and fliers, the presence of a search dog team raises the level of awareness. It involves people in the search, gets them excited and motivated, and elicits useful information even when people have seen the posters and fliers. In many cases, the search dog team will get a critical tip from a neighbor. We feel like asking, “Well, why didn’t you come forward with this information when you first saw the missing cat flier?” For whatever reason, the search dog gets people talking and draws out more and better tips. Some of these leads are mistaken or not actionable, but it provides more information that the cat owner can act on.

If the search dog leaves after three or four hours of looking, and your cat has not been found around the twenty or thirty homes closest to your house, you will at least know that your cat is not in that zone of highest probability. It is possible he moved out of his hiding place as the search dog moved through, but you know he is not hiding under the Wilson’s shed or in the Johnson’s garage. This not only allows you to stop worrying about those possibilities, it lets you focus your search on the next most likely scenarios. Cats do occasionally hitch a ride out of their neighborhood in a moving van or get locked inside a vacant house for sale. These are not as likely as simply hiding under the neighbor’s shed, but such scenarios become more likely when you rule out the most likely situations. An effective search for a cat involves ruling out all the places your cat is not. You need to verify that your cat is not at the local shelter, not at the local vet, not just hiding under the bed, and not in the rafters of the neighbor’s barn. You can rule out most of those places yourself. You can even do a thorough search of your neighbor’s property without a search dog. It’s just a lot easier and more effective if you bring in the search dog.

Another advantage of the search dog is that her nose can point out signs of predation that a human would overlook. This has happened in over 125 cases. The possibility that your cat was taken by a coyote or another predator is one of the least likely things that could have happened. We keep records of the searches we perform, and their outcomes. We don’t always know the final outcome, so our statistics are incomplete. However, we can come up with a minimum and maximum probability of death by predator, accounting for the missing data, and so far the number of pets lost to coyotes and other predators is between 3% and 10%. Almost every other possibility—being at the shelter, hiding under a shed, being stuck inside the wall, hopping in a moving van—is more likely than being taken by a predator. Still, it does happen from time to time, and the search dog has found physical evidence where humans have passed many times without noticing. In four recent cases where we know a coyote took the pet, evidence of a kill was found within a hundred yards of the pet’s house. If we do a thorough search of the areas of highest probability in your neighborhood and the search dog does not find any evidence of predation, then you can say that the likelihood is even lower than the average of 3% to 10%. You can concentrate on other possibilities and spend less time thinking your cat has been killed by a coyote. It is also important to note that in almost all of the cases where my search dogs found evidence of a predator attack, there was little or no chance that I could have located that evidence just looking visually, without a search dog. In almost every case of a predator attack on a cat, it was the search dog’s nose that located the evidence.

A search dog is just one tool, and not a substitute for all the other ways of finding a lost cat. It wouldn’t make sense to look for your cat by only searching houses with odd numbers and not the even-numbered houses. Neither would it make sense to only hire a search dog if you don’t plan on checking the shelters, posting the fliers, visiting the vet, and all those other useful techniques. The use of a search dog is most likely to be helpful when used in conjunction with all other avenues of discovery. Likewise, a visit to the shelter won’t find your cat if he’s still hiding in a tree in the neighbor’s back yard. Your goal in your search for your cat is to check the most likely places first, and then do a thorough search of every place your cat could be. The search dog team covers those aspects of the search that an unaided human could not do as easily or as well.

Because the search dog is just one tool, the handler may bring other equipment on the search. We can bring listening devices to hear faint sounds in crawlspaces and in hedgerows. We have fiber optic scopes to look in crevices and around corners. We will have high-powered flashlights to detect eye reflection in crawlspaces. If predation is suspected, we have forensic chemical tests to help determine if the evidence is relevant to your case. Most of all, the Missing Animal Response Technician handling the dog and guiding the search has the experience of hundreds of other searches, plus training specific to this situation. You should not be an expert in finding lost cats because, hopefully, it doesn’t happen to you very often. You don’t learn brain surgery just in case someone in your family might have a tumor someday, and most people aren’t experienced with plumbing repairs because it is simpler and more effective—and often cheaper—to have a professional handle situations that come up rarely or never. We know what works and what doesn’t when you are searching for a lost cat. Many web sites have free advice that is generally useful in finding a missing cat, but the handler that comes with the search dog can usually answer questions specific to your case because he has experienced the same situation with someone else’s lost cat. Many of the techniques commonly employed by inexperienced people to find a lost cat are unhelpful, and some do more harm than good. We can guide you to the most effective methods and steer you away from ways that have failed in the past.

When you should probably not hire a search dog:

· If you can’t get permission to search a majority of private property in the area of highest probability.

· If you aren’t willing to take all the other steps necessary beyond the search with the dog.

· If your cat has been missing for more than several weeks and there have been no reported sightings.

· If you haven’t already done a thorough search inside your house, including places your cat wouldn’t normally go.

· If you don’t have a reasonable understanding of what a search dog can and cannot do.

Toward that last point, this information is provided so that you don’t have unrealistic expectations of the search dog, and so that you get the most out of your time and money, with the highest chances of success. Every case is different, so be sure to ask questions of the search dog handler before he comes out to work the dog.

You should also understand the physical limits of the search dog. He can only smell what he can smell. The abilities of a dog’s nose are amazing, and a thousand times more powerful than the human nose. However, if the wind is blowing the wrong way, or if the conditions are too hot and dry, a search dog can walk right by a hidden cat without knowing it. We try to minimize the risk of this failure by searching in the best weather conditions (cool and moist) and accounting for wind direction. Still, in many cases, I have had a proven search dog walk along oblivious to a cat that we humans can plainly see fifteen feet away. This is not a failure on the part of the search dog. First of all, he is supposed to be using his nose, not his eyes. Second, dogs can’t really identify objects that aren’t moving: if I throw my dog’s favorite orange ball onto a green lawn while he is not looking, that ball, which a human can see from fifty feet away, is almost invisible to his eyes and he must use his nose to find it. If the ball is moving, he can spot it from a mile away. Cats instinctively know that they become invisible to dogs if they hold still. It is the job of the search dog handler to work the search pattern with the wind flow to give the dog a chance to smell those cats, seen and unseen. Also, dogs can’t climb trees or jump into the rafters of a garage, so the search dog may indicate the presence of a cat without being able to pinpoint the location of the cat. Dogs also lose interest in a game after a certain amount of time, so we usually limit the search to three or four hours, depending on the weather conditions and how the dog is holding up. I can’t push a dog to search. He has to do it because he enjoys the game. The search dog is an amazing tool, but he has his limits, and the person relying on the search dog needs to be aware of those limitations.

Knowing everything I know about search dogs, I would certainly want the services of one if my cat were missing. When my cat did go missing in 1997, I wish I had been able to use the services of a professional with a cat detection dog. As helpful as we can be at times, we work best when the owner of the missing pet has a clear understanding of what we can and cannot do. I hope that we can help you. If you have any questions about how the search dogs work, or which dog we would use for your situation, please ask before the search dog comes out.

One additional note: it has been my practice to bring two dogs out when we search for a cat. In almost every case, Raphael will do all or most of the searching, and Tino will wait in the car. Social media has conditioned many people to think that dogs can never be left in a car unattended. I am not leaving Tino in the car because I am stupid or uncaring or lazy or uninformed. He is there, on standby, in case he is needed. I take measures to make sure he is not too hot. We can’t even search for a cat when the temperatures are too high, anyway. If you want us to come and look for your cat, it is very likely that one dog will be in the car while the other dog works. If you absolutely believe that a dog can never be left alone in the car for any length of time, then please don’t request the search dog for your cat. I love my dogs more than life itself, and I would never leave them in the car alone if I felt they were at risk.

If you haven’t already, please read the entire Guide to Finding Your Lost Cat.