Pet detective work can be extremely rewarding, especially when there’s a happy ending. Sometimes, helping someone to find a lost pet is as simple as giving advice and heartfelt encouragement. Other times, it’s about spending hours trudging through mud, negotiating steep terrain, sweltering in hot weather, all the while questioning whether the idea to become a pet detective was, like my skeptical friends told me, a really nutty career change.

So, what is a pet detective? Back in the 1970’s, when the concept was first introduced, lost pet services were basic, and included distributing flyers, checking local shelters, and conducting surveillance work to recover stolen pets. Since then, pet detectives have gone hi-tech. Services now include the use of feline detection dogs, scent tracking dogs, amplified listening devices, baby monitors, surveillance cameras, DNA testing, presumptive blood analysis testing, behavioral profiling, and other law enforcement-based techniques. … Register/Login to read more