THE SUPER SLEUTHS ★
How dogs are using their noses to recover lost pets.
During his years in the police force, Colin Butcher focused on animal crimes, so when he left the force, he set up a private detective agency. He now runs The UK Pet Detectives, in Guildford, Surrey, specialising in investigating the theft of animals and finding lost pets, including cats.
“Being around for thousands of years, cats have reached the point where they’re the perfect ambush predator, which means they’re very, very good at not being seen,” explained Colin.
“I’d worked with drug dogs, and I knew how brilliant they were at finding the tiniest amount of narcotics. I started thinking that we could almost certainly train up a dog to find cats.”
Making that dream a reality — training Cocker Spaniel Molly — took a year and a half, and the help of charity Medical Detection Dogs’ CEO Claire Guest.
“Molly is trained in what’s called source to origin,” explained Colin. “We take the source from the house, and Molly finds the origin of the scent — the cat.
“If a cat’s got locked in a garage, because he’s giving off scent constantly, eventually the garage will be packed full of the cat’s scent. The scent starts to seep out of the window frames and underneath the doors.
“Every cat in the world has a unique scent. When we’re working in a city, say central London, there might be a density of 60 or 70 cats in a small area. Molly can detect the exact cat who’s missing, and ignore all the others.” No wonder that four out of every five searches end successfully!
The drive that makes Molly a marvellous working dog made her a challenging pet. “I’m her fourth home,” Colin revealed.
“She was on Gumtree at 10 months old. I researched her history; each time Molly changed hands she’d be getting more unruly, difficult, and destructive. When
I got her, she was a hyper, little bit out of control, disobedient food thief. She doesn’t have a disposition that’s about being petted. She enjoys affection, but she absolutely adores working.”
However, Molly need days off. If she searches for more than three days in
a row, she can get nose fatigue. The pet detective job is intense for both dog and handler.
“Everyone we work for is a committed cat lover. It’s not unusual to have them collapse in tears after the first hour when we’ve not got their cat back.”
But for Molly, Colin ensures every search ends positively. “When I get the source sample from the owner’s home, I gather enough to split it into four: one is the working sample, which is used throughout the day; two are kept indefinitely; and at the end of every single search, when we haven’t had a success and when Molly’s having a rest, I’ll hide the final sample in the location. Molly will detect it and get the reward,” he said.
“The pet detective job is intense...”