The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Woman on a mission to locate lost pets
In the past decade Katie Mccandless-thomas has helped to successfully reunite more than 3,000 pets with their owners.
For many years she provided a 24-7 alerting and finding service as the founder of Facebook page Missing Pets, Perth and Kinross. She even worked while on her honeymoon in Mauritius.
The Perth woman is now being aided by 30 fellow animal-lovers who jump into action if an owner’s beloved animal goes missing in the county.
Neither Katie, 35, nor her team receive a penny for their work, which includes night-time searches in remote parts of the local area.
Yet there are two strands to this valuable service.
One is the relief and joy felt by pet owners when there is a happy ending.
The other is the pride and satisfaction felt by Katie when she has helped facilitate this.
For someone whose anxiety and physical health was so troubling that she struggled to attend school and work in a formal setting, this feeling cannot be underestimated.
“It has given me a purpose at a time when I felt lost and didn’t know what I would be doing with my life,” says Katie, whose page now has more than 27,000 followers.
“No one wants an animal to go missing. You can’t put into words that feeling until you have experienced it, but I want to give back and help.
“Animals are family and I want to help people get their furry ‘child’ back.”
Katie had a tough upbringing, not because she was naughty or neglected, but because of her health.
Katie, whose dad passed away close to her third birthday, was raised in a supportive environment in King Street by mother Kathleen and stepdad James Carcary.
She attended Craigie Primary School and Perth High School, where she was poorly for the first four years.
“I was only there for a tiny bit each year,” Katie recalls.
“High school isn’t for everyone and it certainly wasn’t for me. I wasn’t bullied but I suffered a lot of anxiety and health problems throughout.
“Being in a school environment didn’t nurture me or fill me with any confidence. I am just one of those people who can say that school wasn’t my cup of tea at the time.”
Katie left with four standard qualifications at C and D grades.
“The qualifications don’t mean much to me,” she admits. “I was more concerned with how I was feeling physically and mentally rather than grades on a piece of paper.”
After finishing with school, Katie worked in cafes, pubs and restaurants in Perth, which included stints at the Twa Tams and Ramada Jarvis Hotel (now Mercure Perth).
At 18 she went on what she intended to be a twoweek holiday in St Albans, Hertfordshire, to visit her cousin Robert.
Within a week she got a job in a bar, so stayed for much longer.
“I had a really lovely bunch of friends around there,” Katie says.
“Robert is like a big brother to me, so it was a really nice experience and I have fond memories.”
She moved back up to Perth a year later due to illhealth, which stopped her from returning to work for the next five years.
“I had undiagnosed stomach problems and to this day they still don’t know what it is,” Katie says.
“I can get a lot of pain around my torso, it flares up and it can be debilitating at its worst.
“I was really ill, lost weight and had a lot of time in hospital. From then the anxiety and depression got worse.
“They took me in hospital a couple of times for ultrasound scans. I had exploratory surgery when they tried to cut me open to see what was wrong. They saw nothing that set off any alarm bells, so they have never been able to pinpoint what causes the pain or flare-ups.
“I never stayed long in hospital, maybe two or three days at a time. There were a couple of times when I was very sick and dehydrated and they took me in for tests.
“There was no possible way I could work.”
In such trying circumstances her Lhasa apso dog at the time, Charlie, was a huge support.
Katie had always loved animals, growing up with collies as well as Dobermanns Dillon and Pepper. Her mother reminds her that when she was young she would often bring home limping birds or other ailing animals for rehabilitation.
So when Charlie – father of Katie’s current dog, Baxter – disappeared, it was horrifying.
“My mum came to see me and she was really upset,” says Katie, who is married to Laurie, 40. “I went into autopilot thinking ‘what are we going to do to help her?’
“My husband searched one area, my parents searched another.
“I messaged friends and asked them to keep a lookout.”
Fortunately, Charlie was found a few hours later “having the time of his life” at Craigie Burn, close to South Inch.
“It was only when I got home that all the emotions hit me at once,” Katie says.
“What if we didn’t find him? What if someone had taken him? What if he was in an accident?
“The thought played on my mind for a while. If he was missing longer what would I do? How would I alert more people to look out for him?
“That’s when I decided I would set up Missing Pets, Perth and Kinross to initially have a platform to put a post on Facebook.
“Since then it has grown and grown in a way I couldn’t believe.”
At the beginning, Katie was “a little shy to get my name out” but the page soon took a life of its own after her efforts helped find a husky missing for 10 days.
“He was the first big case that put us out there and got more people following the page,” she said.
Katie soon found herself working around the clock.
“I have had phone calls at 3am about dogs being found and, if we have a particularly difficult missing dog case where owners are out for the night, I am on my phone checking just in case they need help, support or advice,” she says.
This is what she continued to give during
“Losing a pet is the worst feeling. If I could give up some of my time to help, I will do what I can
her holidays, even on her honeymoon in Mauritius in 2018.
“I still had my phone on me and still tried to message people,” Katie said.
“If an owner was in need of help I didn’t want to let them down. Baxter is my world, so I know how I would have felt if anything happened to him.
“Losing a pet is the worst feeling and I would never wish it on anyone. If I could give up some of my time to help I will do what I can.”
While laudable, this level of dedication proved unsustainable.
Not long after the holiday she began to delegate. When her good friend Christine Faulds Quinn stepped in to help with administration Katie felt a weight lift off her shoulders.
“When it was really busy I was so used to how it was that it seemed normal,” Katie says.
“And it’s only when I started taking on other people to help that I realised how much I was doing on my own.”
The group has been transformed in the past four years.
Fundraising initiatives have yielded a thermal drone, two thermal scopes, and cat and dog traps that help locate missing pets in a painless manner.
Christine is now the operations co-ordinator and there are volunteer teams based in Scone, Blairgowrie and Crieff.
Six administrators oversee the Facebook page and there are now as many as 30 volunteers bringing their own skills in animal care.
“As much as I love animals I don’t know about every type of animal,” Katie concedes. “I have a volunteer who is very knowledgeable about birds, and another few who know about rabbits.
“I never imagined 10 years ago it could have got to this level.”
Katie says the page has a high success rate and there are some missing pets who stand out.
In 2019, volunteer Ryan Gowrie’s dog Ruby went missing in Dunkeld, sparking an ultimately successful three-day search by the Blairgowrie team.
“That was special because Ryan is such a friend to us,” she says.
“He helps so much when dogs go missing, so when Ruby went missing we felt it as well.
“When she was found there were tears.”
Having teams covering different areas means volunteers could still search for lost animals while respecting the fivemile travel limit imposed during the Covid lockdowns.
In one instance a West Yorkshire terrier went missing in the Coupar Angus area but because a volunteer lived nearby the dog was able to be located.
For the past four years Katie has run her own business in a related field.
She manages Dog Friendly Perthshire, which promotes restaurants, cafes, accommodation and other venues where fourlegged friends are welcome.
With business partner Stine Hope she also runs pet-themed Barket markets every few months. Recently they held Canines at the Castle at Dundee’s Mains Castle, and they had a stall at The Yard in Perth’s Ice Factory.
More than 100 companies advertise on the website.
“I would say Perthshire is the dog capital of Scotland,” Katie declares.
“Since I started up, more and more places have definitely welcomed dogs through their doors.
“They see that the owner doesn’t see the dog as just a pet but that they are part of the family.
“A lot of people don’t want to always leave dogs at home. They want have a full day with them and not have to rush back to drop them off at home.”