Detective uses strategy developed by US police to help owners reunite with pets

INTERNATIONAL pet detective Megan Denize uses pet profiling based on the missing persons’ search strategy developed by the US police agencies to help reunite missing pets with their owners.

Pet detectives recovered Alexandra Bright's pet African parrot Buddy after it flew the coop.

INTERNATIONAL pet detective Megan Denize uses forensic techniques developed by US police agencies to help reunite missing pets with their owners.

The New Zealand-based Denize, who was recently in Australia for Animal Welfare League conference, Getting 2 Zero, uses pet profiling, based on the missing persons’ search strategy developed by the US police, to work out personality, environment and other factors that causes pets to go missing.

“At present, only 1 per cent of lost cats and 46 per cent of lost dogs are recovered through animal shelters and rescue organisations.”

Denize’s pet detective journey began with 60 cats.

“I was running a marketing agency, and fostering cats in my spare time,” she says.

“One day I realised that I had cared for more than 60 cats and started wondering why so many were ending up in my house, and weren’t living happily wherever they had started out life.

“I began a piece of research which showed that one in three pets go missing, and there really wasn’t a specialist service available to help figure out where they had gone.”

“There were lots of websites sending photographs of lost pets around the internet, and lots of rescue groups rehoming lost pets but nobody seemed to be providing the piece in the middle — helping pet owners to understand where their pets were most likely to be and help them recover them safely. So I set out to provide that expertise with Inspector Spot.”

Inspector Spot founder Megan Denize is a real life pet detective.

She says pet owners were now turning to the internet without much luck.

“While their missing pet’s photograph may be shared hundreds or thousands of times, in reality most of the people who see that photo are nowhere near their missing pet so cannot genuinely help to locate them,” she says.

She says pet detectives can bridge the gap between random searches and internet postings by helping pet owners come up with a detailed search plan.

Denize, who operates Inspector Spot out of New Zealand and the United States, says achieving a zero euthanasia rate for all health lost dogs and cats, one of the aims of Getting 2 Zero, was critical.

“At present, only 1 per cent of lost cats and 46 per cent of lost dogs are recovered through animal shelters and rescue organisations,” she says.

“Many of them end up being put to sleep, leaving their owners forever wondering what happened to them.

“We are doing our part to help reduce the euthanasia rate by giving animal shelters, rescue groups and pet owners the tools they need to recover their animals, and reduce the chance of them becoming a euthanasia statistic.

Ms Denize is a pet detective, similar to Ace Ventura.

ABOUT INSPECTOR SPOT

Inspector Spot was founded by Megan Denize, a US Certified Pet Detective with more than a decade of experience in animal psychology, training, rescue and rehabilitation. After personally fostering more than one hundred rescued animals, Megan began considering why so many creatures were turning up in her living room. She uncovered a global problem: 1 in 3 pets go missing. But why weren’t they returning home?

These days Megan no longer has 54 abandoned cats and 35 rescued ducklings camped out in her living room. However, her own brood of pets still significant. She is fur parent to six cranky cats, three delinquent dogs, two Flemish Giant bunnies, two rescued chinchillas, two goats, two sheep and four happy hens. They live happily together at a property affectionately known as “The Urban Farmyard”.

ABOUT GETTING 2 ZERO

Getting to Zero aims to achieve zero euthanasia of all healthy and treatable cats and dogs

This event we will concentrate on the largest population of incoming animals to any pound and shelter in Australia — those that are lost and stray. The theme for this year’s conference was Getting Them Home, Keeping Them Home.

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