Cardiac nurse, Lisa Nazarenko returned home from her night shift on May 2, 2010, to find that her 12 year old female Labrador, Cappuccino, was missing. The Lab had never left the deck of their house in Bowdoine, Maine. Cappuccino had left through the doggie door and was found six weeks later. She had died in the wild. “It was the most devastating time of my life,” says Lisa.
The sadness and helplessness that Lisa felt on losing her pet was so profound that she vowed never to let a pet owner feel the same way. Her resolution, motivated by Cappuccino’s memory, led to the formation of Lost Pet Tracking Dog, one of the few pet detective services in the USA.
“We offer help to people who were in my position, people looking for their lost pets without a trace of evidence to lead them in any direction to where they might be,” says Lisa, who continues to work as a nurse at the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, USA.
Shortly after losing Cappuccino, Lisa trained with a private investigator in Nebraska in this line of work. “Under the guidance of the PI, I taught three of my dogs to track specific scents. This means if 10 dogs are sitting in a room, I want them to find the exact dog I’m looking for,” she says.
In order to track, the dogs sniff an item that has the missing animal’s scent on it, such as a collar. The article containing the scent is presented to the skilled canine and the sighting is confirmed with an individualised “yes” or “no” response by the canine.
Lisa, whose canine team comprises of four trained pooches, Mason, Dante, Vita and Bella, has in the short time since she started tracking lost dogs, notched up a success rate as high as 90 percent. “We are blessed for that,” she says adding, “With over 86 cases, we utilise the community in a campaign awareness that works together with us to successfully recover a pet.”
Currently training with her team in California, she says, “We are training for additional techniques to enhance my team’s skill. After all, we do learn something new on every case. After 10 years of nursing, I love this line of work.”
Signing off she says, “Always use a harness on your dog, instead of collars, the plastic clasps or buckles always break or separate. Dogs tend to travel far when lost, so when posting signs, just when you think you’ve gone far enough: Go further! A lost cat generally won’t travel far, but within a mile or so from the point of escape. So, start your search from where the kitty left, then work outward.”