On Thursday, May 24, 2018, Mu searched for a lost cat named Blaze. Mu is 85 pounds, dark brown, with the muscular build of a pit bull mix. Although his job is to use his nose, his brown eyes are alert, assessing everything. He wears a bright orange vest, with a panel that says SEARCH in black letters. His job is to find lost cats, the way other trained dogs search for lost humans. When we arrived at the start of the search, he was amped up, as usual, whining and pacing, eager to begin. The previous day, this cat had escaped from a faulty pet carrier in front of a veterinary office in Mill Creek, WA, north of Seattle. His family had brought him there to have a lump on his abdomen checked. They were responsible pet owners, whose beloved cat escaped through no fault of anyone in particular. It could just as easily have happened to me. Blaze, a fluffy orange cat, eight years old and sixteen pounds, ran into the tangled forest near the vet's office when the carrier he was in fell apart without warning. The woods near the parking lot were about five acres, and very dense with thick underbrush and fallen trees. Family and friends searched for Blaze and called his name for hours, but they couldn't find him. I had advised his family to set a humane trap overnight, but after his traumatic experience with the pet carrier, I wasn't sure if he would go into a trap. Often, in a case where a cat is lost in an area with lots of hiding places in dense woods, I would normally recommend using the trap and not necessarily using the cat-detection dog right away. In thick woods, there is the risk of scaring a cat away with the noise of stepping on twigs and brush. Because Blaze didn't go into the trap overnight, and he might have an aversion to the trap, I agreed that bringing the search dog seemed to be the best option. Also, the possibility of an urgent medical condition favored swift action over patient waiting.
When Mu and I got ready to start the search, Blaze’s owner, Stacy, presented some items for the search dog to sniff, to follow the scent trail. I explained to her that, although I do have dogs trained to follow scent trails of individual cats and dogs, this wasn’t a good situation for that type of search because of the heavy brush and brambles. It would be difficult or impossible to follow a scent trail from point A to point B because Blaze undoubtedly slipped under the fallen trees and berry vines where a scent-trailing dog and human could not easily follow. Mu is a cat-detection dog. He looks for any cat he can find, the way a search dog might screen luggage for a bomb. In Mu’s case, the cat is the bomb. This allows us to search all the hiding places within a given radius, and we don’t need to rely on a scent trail when the circumstances might make one difficult to track. Mu has had success finding cats in brambles and brush using the approach of a grid search.
A high ceiling of thin clouds blocked the sun, and the weather app on my phone said it was 59 degrees, but it felt warmer to me. When the temperature rises above 63 degrees, Mu may become less efficient as a search dog. If he starts panting too much, then the incoming air mostly bypasses his olfactory membrane. I wanted to find Blaze quickly, before Mu got too warm to work effectively. I attached the leash to Mu’s harness, his cue to switch to work mode. He started sniffing around the edge of the woods, and I held him back, to avoid getting into the brush and making noise. About 30 minutes into our search, on a gravel road beside the woods, Mu found coyote scat, and pointed it out to me, as he is trained to do. Coyotes usually reveal what they have been eating because they consume the fur and bones of their prey. This coyote had eaten a white cat some time in the last couple of weeks, it appeared, judging by the fur. There wouldn’t be any wild animals with that much white fur. Coyotes don't normally prey on domestic pets, but once one of them starts doing it, he usually continues, creating a surge in lost cat posters in an area. This discovery made it more urgent to locate Blaze quickly. With his unknown illness and coyotes in the area, and the rising temperatures, I felt like we really needed to find him fast.
I let Mu continue the search, into the dense woods. I tried to start working on the far side of where I thought Blaze would likely be, so that if we flushed him out of hiding, he would move closer to his owner, who was waiting near where the trap was set, close to the vet's office. It is almost never our goal to flush a cat out of a hiding place. Our hope is to find the cat and not disturb him. Then I would pull the search dog away and let the cat’s owner gently coax him out of hiding. Because there is always a risk that we could inadvertently flush a cat out of his safe spot, I try to work the dog so that if it does happen, the cat moves closer to home, or closer to safety. I used a GPS app on my phone to navigate on the far side of where I suspected Blaze would be. About an hour into the search, Mu found more coyote scat. In this case, the coyote had eaten a grey striped cat, some time within the last two weeks. It appeared these woods were home to one or more coyotes in the habit of eating cats.
Because it was cloudy and I couldn't use the sun for direction, I used my phone’s GPS to track our movements and try to search the dense woods in a methodical way. In this tangled forest, even though we were in the middle of a dense suburban area, there were no visual cues to indicate we weren’t in the middle of a vast wilderness. Although Mu follows his nose, to some extent, I do steer him to one area or another, asking him to “Check this,” or “Check here.” We try to work an area in an efficient grid, so we don’t miss any hiding places. The GPS track recorded on my phone as a red line on the map shows if we miss any areas, so we can go back and fill in the gaps. We looped through the woods once and came out in a nearby apartment complex. Blaze didn't appear to be in the apartment complex, under a deck or under a car, and we had found no signs, so far, that he had been taken by a coyote. We entered the woods in a new location, and carefully searched a new area. I was trying to move slow and quiet, so as not to displace Blaze, but the dense brush was full of crunchy dead leaves and dried twigs and skinny branches that snapped under my feet. About 90 minutes into the search, as the temperature was climbing closer to the 63 degree mark, Mu hit on the fresh scent of a cat. I held him back, so he didn't advance too quickly, but up ahead of him I saw Blaze pop out of a fern and jump over a log. I was relieved that we found him, but anxious that he bolted. And he was headed the wrong direction, deeper into the woods.
I called his owner, and asked her to go the apartments to the west because it seemed Blaze was headed that way. Mu and I continued to track Blaze, trying not to make him feel more panic, but Mu was very excited, and not very stealthy. Fifty feet ahead of us, I saw Blaze run up a tree. This was good, in a way, because at least he wouldn't be running farther away. We could get him down with a ladder if he would just stay put. Mu and I went to the base of the tree, hoping to keep him there until his owner came, but Blaze jumped down. I was worried we might lose him, but Blaze just froze, about twelve feet ahead of us. He didn't like the dog following him, and he may have had the instinctive knowledge that it's best not to run from a dog and make him chase. Blaze was going to stand his ground and give Mu hell if he got too close. The fluffy orange cat was stressed, probably ill, and obviously not in a good mood. I used Mu’s leash to secure the excited dog to a tree, a little farther away, and I moved closer to Blaze. I watched his body language, and I would stop advancing when he appeared to be getting ready to bolt again.
I guided Stacy into the woods, but it took her a long time to get to us because the brush was so dense. She couldn’t see us at all, so I would steer her with text messages as I listened to her footsteps approaching. In places, she had to crawl to get to us. I was able to get within about four feet of where Blaze was crouched. I didn't want to grab at him because he looked like he might panic and run. As his owner approached, the crunching leaves and twigs made Blaze get up as if getting ready to bolt, so I instructed her to stop approaching until he relaxed again. In this way, moving about five feet at a time, she gradually moved closer to Blaze. When she was about three feet away, Blaze started to move slowly away, as if his legs were heavy. He moved like you do in a dream sometimes, when you want to run from zombies but your legs won’t respond properly. Blaze’s owner moved forward quietly but swiftly, from behind, and she gently scooped him up. Once in her arms, he didn't struggle, and he seemed ready to go home. I kept Mu away, and tried to keep him quiet, as the owner carried Blaze out of the woods. A friend met her in the closest neighboring yard and they climbed into the car, not even trying to get Blaze in a carrier. They lived five minutes away, and I was very relieved to get the text message that Blaze was safely in the house without further incident.
I felt very proud of Mu, my partner. We have worked together for over 9 years and found hundreds of lost cats. He is my best friend, my family, and he is smart and funny, a hard worker and a great companion. He does get a little too excited sometimes, when I wish he would be quieter around a cat, but that energy and enthusiasm is what keeps him working, in dense woods, for hours, when the temperature starts to climb. With my knowledge and experience, I am able to direct him so that his skilled nose has the best chance for success. We make a great team, and I feel a deep connection to him. He means the world to me, and I would do anything for him. I understand, when someone loses a cat, that they have lost a family member, and they would do anything they could to get their cat back. I can just imagine if my Mu was lost, how devastated I would be. My bond with Mu helps us honor the bond people feel with their cats. We don't always find the lost cat, but we do pinpoint them about 25% of the time. When we don’t find the cat, we can at least provide information to guide the search. For cats like Blaze, we are able to be the answer their families need in a time of crisis.
Sometimes, when we are in the middle of a search for a lost cat or dog, I will run into someone who implies or expresses overtly that they think it is odd or surprising that anyone would go to so much trouble to find a lost pet. I’ve had people say things like, “It must be a really expensive or important dog.” Or, “You can get a new cat at the pound, really cheap.” Those are the type of people who would not hire me and my search dogs to look for a lost pet. The people who do hire us often refer to their cats and dogs as their children. That’s certainly how I think about my dogs. Mu’s full name is Wakomu, a name given to him by his foster family. In Chippewa, it means, He Is Family. (Or so I was told. I haven’t been able to verify this. Maybe they were playing a joke on me, and Wakomu actually means “He is crazy,” which would also be appropriate.) Mu is my family. He means more to me than any material possessions. I like my dogs more than all but a handful of humans, and those humans I do like understand that they are never a higher priority to me than my dogs. I bought Mu, in 2011, for $100 to get him away from a life of abuse and neglect, and I didn’t originally plan to keep him for myself. I fell in love with him (as if I had a choice), and now we have been working partners since 2012. He likes to sleep curled up against my chest. We have worked hundreds of cases together, and he has located hundreds of missing cats that probably wouldn’t have been found by other means. He has helped families find their lost sons and daughters who just happen to be cats. We do this work because we enjoy it. We do this work because there is a great need for the service. We do this work because if my Mu was lost, I would do anything within my power to get him back. Mu is an extension of my soul, and I would be lost without him.
Mu and I are good at what we do. We work well together, and our years of experience allows us to solve cases of missing pets more frequently and effectively than when we started. We have learned from our mistakes. Still, I always want to improve. One way I think we could make great improvements in the rate at which lost cats and dogs stay with their families is through education. The best way to help a lost pet is to prevent that pet from going missing in the first place. The next best way is to prepare for the chance that your pet will go missing, and have a plan of action ready for a worst case scenario. Another factor that makes a huge difference in the rate of recovery of lost pets is the human-animal bond, and it is my hope that stories of search dogs finding pets can help people see their pets in a new light, perhaps becoming closer, or understanding each other better. Another way we could help more lost pets would be if more people were trained to do this work. People often ask for my help when I am already busy on another search, and I wish there were more people in my area working in this field so I could refer people in need to a qualified person and search dog. Before I started training for this work, in 2008, I didn’t even know it was a thing people did. If I had known I could work with my trained dogs to find lost pets, I would have started doing this sooner. When people do call me, they often say they had no idea there was a service to find lost pets until they happened to stumble upon my web page through a google search, or a friend referred them. Lost pet recovery, conducted by trained professionals, should be a service available for any and every cat and dog. I hope someday it will be common for search dogs to be available for lost pets, and I hope these stories about Mu will inspire some people to train their dogs and educate themselves in finding lost pets. My dogs and I can only help about 700 to 800 families per year with searches and advice. I see on social media and through web sites that dozens of cats and dogs go missing in my area every day. As much as Mu loves to find cats, there are simply too many for us to find them all. I hope that someone reading this will be inspired to train a dog like Mu.