Search

I've got a search in just a short while - we're going to take Copper out for a refresher course before he runs the actual trail for the job - he's got to get his head in the game. Last Monday we did a search for a small dog in a heavily wooded/rural area. We found no conclusive evidence but plenty of coyote scat and at least one decomp site. There's no way to tell a client for sure if that means their dog or cat was killed, definitively (unless we find say, a collar or something), but it is a hard-to-dispute possibility in cases like that. Before I started this work I had it romanticized in my head - which for me is normal. I usually daydream about something before I do it to the point that I know it's not going to work out that way but golly, gee, why not? Of course it has proved more difficult than I imagined. Dogs or cats that go missing already have something against them. In other words something in their routine or normal day has changed, or they wouldn't be missing. Then, particularly in a state like Alabama, you have so many predators. To be sure the Birmingham area is pretty built up and cosmopolitan (bet you didn't think you'd hear cosmopolitan to describe a city in Alabama!) but it doesn't take much time to travel to rural areas - especially for a large, healthy dog. Then of course there is the challenge of interpreting what Copper is telling me. That for me can be the most frustrating. Are you snuffling after a raccoon, or do you actually think you have the missing pet's scent? Then there are the successes - clear evidence or the missing animal him/herself. Those finds are rare-er than I thought which is why my PollyAnna brain has some adjusting to do still to being a pet detective. But I do know we can help. And I do know Copper can smell a drop of barbeque sauce two hours before being brushed lovingly onto the steak that will go onto the grill across town.