Product Description

For millions of people, a pet is more than just an animal that shares a living space. These millions will do anything they can to recover a four-legged member of the family when it goes missing: unfortunately, most people just don't know where to look. Kat Albrecht is the person they call. Disillusioned by a police career where her brilliant search dogs and own dog-tracking techniques rarely got a chance to shine, Kat started training her retired weimaraner Rachel to search for lost animals-and found a whole new arena opening up. To the amusement of her skeptical colleagues, Kat decided to transform her newfound avocation into a business, becoming the only law-enforcement-based pet detective in the United States.

Using investigative techniques such as probability theory, behavioral profiling, and physical searches by trained dogs, Kat Albrecht has helped more than eighteen hundred pet owners locate their lost dogs, cats, snakes, turtles, parrots, and horses. Along the way, she has faced one-of-a-kind challenges in her work: technical issues like teaching her trained search dogs to pursue missing pets, unexpected roadblocks (how do you convince a forensics lab to conduct a DNA test on a cat's whisker?), and the surprising difficulties associated with living in the shadow of Ace Ventura. But these challenges are balanced by unique joys each time Kat helps reunite a missing pet with its owners.

The Lost Pet Chronicles tells the fascinating story of Kat's unlikely career path-and of how, along the way, doing the work she loved transformed her from a dissatisfied, disaffected cop into a woman who has found her true calling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1016400 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 243 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this thoroughly engaging book, Albrecht narrates, with deadpan humor and Grisham-like suspense, the story of how she came to create an entirely new career: lost pet search and rescue. As a police dispatcher and later a police officer in California, Albrecht was duty bound to give human emergencies priority over animal crises, but it wasn't until her Eeyore-like bloodhound, A.J., went missing that Albrecht saw the need for sophisticated detective and scent trail work to find pets. Going against the advice of colleagues and even friends, Albrecht trains her dogsâ€"first Rachel, a search-and-rescue Weimeraner, and then bloodhounds Chase and A.J. (who was found)â€"to scent cats and other dogs in the same way they located lost hikers or on-the-lam criminals. Taking the reader on searches for everything from huskies and terriers to boa constrictors, she describes her dogs' incredible ability to detect scents and shares her own honed deductions about animal and human behavior. Sometimes the author isn't able to find the lost animal and can only return bad news to people, like the owners of Gus, a cat who runs away days after their son's death. Yet with humor and fascinating insight into search-and-rescue work, Albrecht continues to find innovative ways to help animals and the humans who love them, and inspires readers with her dramatic career changes. With an epilogue containing indispensable information on how to look for missing pets, this is a must-read for animal lovers and sleuths alike.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Yes, Virginia, there really is a pet detective. But erase from your mind those images of gangly Jim Carrey slapsticking his way through a case. This pet detective, a former police officer and crime-scene investigator, is smart, shrewd, and possessed of a deep and passionate love for animals (puppy lovers will not be able to read her first chapter without emitting a giggle or three). Of course, anyone would have to love animals to embark on a career involving lost puppies, kitties, horses, and snakes, which is what Albrecht did when she realized that she did not have much of a future with the police department. The book, which recounts several of her cases, is downright engrossing. Readers who think "pet detective" is a silly name for a profession will be impressed with the skill and dedication it takes to locate a missing animal. Animal lovers will be alternately sad, angry, nervous, and happy. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This is a must-read for animal lovers and sleuths alike."
-- Publishers Weekly (Publisher's Weekly )

Customer Reviews

A Touching and Informative Book!
Every pet owner should read this book! I found Kat's story to be interestng and so touching. She has a real passion for lost pets that was apparent in the book. There are joyful moments and also moments where I was reading with tears streaming down my face. I couldn't put it down and tore through it in three days. The book also contains an epilogue with excellent advice on how to find a lost cat or dog based on her experience. A portion of the proceeds from the book go to Missing Pet Partnership, a non-profit organization formed by the author.

A modern classic for pet lovers of all ages!
Meet Kat Albrecht: real-life Pet Detective! Police Officer and K-9 dog trainer and handler, Albrecht has begun a revolution in the way organizations search for missing pets. Albrecht's autobiographical novel immediately drags in the reader and takes them on a dramatic roller coaster as we follow every dip, curve, and plunge of her calling to a career in founding a nationwide non-profit organization for Missing Pets. Enter Albrecht's world and see the very best of human beings and their love for their pets -- and the inspiration of true heroism. A heart-warming, joyful, touching novel to cherish and share with all animal lovers!

Great book, moving story, remarkable woman!
This book is interesting, informative, engaging, sometimes sad and sometimes happy. The author, a former cop turned pet detective, is remarkable for her determination and inner strength and foresight into a needed service. She takes on a calling by herself and does incredible things (establishing a field) through her own inner reserve and motivation. I was sad that she was still alone (single) at the end and had had some hard knocks, but she is an amazing person.

Her dogs, too, are phenomenal in their abilities and accomplishments. Kat relates her finding her dogs, her early days with them, almost accidentally stumbling into looking for lost pets, and how she developed a training method and collected data on lost animals.

Great stories of rescues, and also some heart-breakers. Kat also includes some practical (and in my experience, accurate) advice on searching for lost pets.

It's definitely worth a read!