First, we go in chronological order. I had a wonderful experience last Monday- for those of you who don't know, I'm training my dog Boo to find lost pets. She is far from ready to be certified and go out on actual searches, but I do demos with her and that sort of thing, keeping the level of difficulty to what she can handle. She's training to do two separate tasks: (1) focus on the scent of one individual animal and ignore all others, tracing the path that animal took until she catches up with it, and (2) alert me when she catches the scent of any particular species I'm looking for and show me where the nearest one is (in this case, cats). On Monday, here's an account of what happened.

While at work (I work at a shelter), I received a call about a lost cat. This was an all declawed, older cat who was pretty shy and I was told she was an indoor-only cat. Since I've been doing a lot of reading and such on how best to find particular types of lost pets (indoor versus outdoor cats, shy versus confident, etc) and so I gave the lady the information I had on how best to go about finding her cat (which I do a lot nowadays), and I also put her down on the lost list at work. She was very happy with my suggestions, and then out of the blue, she asks, "Why doesn't someone train a bloodhound or something to look for animals like this?" It just hit me, the similarity between this and how this whole Boo-training thing started, and I just felt compelled to tell her that I was training my dog for this sort of situation, but she was far from down with training. Nevertheless, her need just reached out and grabbed me, and I offered to bring Boo along and talk with her later that night after work around 8 pm. I made sure to tell her that neither Boo nor I are certified yet and that Boo wasn't very good, but that we would do what we could to help her.

My husband tagged along, and we met the cat owners just a little before 8 pm. They were two very sweet nuns, and obviously distraught about their missing cat. I introduced myself, my husband, and of course, the Boo. Since the nuns had had a confirmed sighting, we tried up that way first (which I realize now was a mistake, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly), and I got a little worried when I found out that the sighting was about 2 or 3 blocks away from the exit point. It nagged at me, and I kept telling my husband that it didn't make since, as everything I had read said the cat should be close to the house (so we should be searching close to the house). But I thought perhaps something had happened to run the cat off, and then maybe she'd hang out close to the area she was spotted. This area was filled with excellent hiding places, and I took Boo around and pointed out good spots to set traps and feeding stations. Boo was okay, checking where asked for the most part, but I wasn't sure if she would alert or not to a cat. Maybe half an hour into the search, we approached a stand of trees. We saw a cat in the trees, which spooked out of the brush and away across a neighbor's lawn. It was not our cat. Then, we saw another cat, and Boo alerted to it. It also spooked, toward a lean to which I had identified already as a good hiding spot. Boo, of her own initiative, stuck her nose to the ground and tracked that cat all the way to the lean to, under a wagon. She repeatedly alerted there when asked to find a cat, and I'm pretty positive there's a hole in the lean-to wall that leads under the shed, and around to where we set a trap.

We kept looking, and Boo alerted to a neighbor's cat, and I identified some more likely places to set up feeding stations, and then we went back to the nuns' house. I told them I wanted to check by their house, just to be sure, since it seemed so strange that this cat would be spotted so far away. We looked around, and I advised them to change the location of the feeding station they had near their house. Then, finding nothing, we stood near their garage and I was giving some final advice and also trying to boost their confidence. All of a sudden, one of the nuns stopped- she heard meowing. It was coming from the garage. We quickly opened the door and I very gingerly went into the crowded garage, without Boo so as not to spook an already shy and possibly frightened kitty (hoping this was our Katie). Finally, I lifted a sheet, and there she was! She must have heard us talking long enough to gain the confidence to meow in response to her owners voice.

I of course felt very silly, as I should have searched the house first, and I definitely should have thought of the garage! It seems so obvious now. But it was a learning experience, and Boo did very well in her search- better than I had thought, and this was when it counted!

The nuns were ecstatic. I was just so thrilled and humbled to be able to take part in their joy! It was so very amazing and... I just can't find the exact words. I am so very excited to keep training both Boo and myself, and I can't wait to truly begin helping people. I got home at 9:45, thoroughly exhausted, but I wouldn't trade this experience for the world. I knew right away that I just had to tell you about this. I learned a lot, and can't wait to learn more.