Wayward Pooch? Call the Pet Detective

Feb. 17, 2006 — -- Vivi, the missing whippet from the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, remains at large, but a pet detective says she may just be scared of her new surroundings and hiding.

"Lost dogs, especially like this one with a skittish temperament, are likely not going to come up to people," said Kat Albrecht, a police detective turned pet detective who is founder and CEO of Pet Hunters International.

Albrecht applies the same forensic science and techniques employed in her former work finding missing people to search for lost pets. Since 1997, Pet Hunters has helped reunite about 1,800 pets with their owners. She launched Pet Hunters, a pet detective academy in Clovis, Calif., last year.

In Vivi's case, the dog was at John F. Kennedy International Airport to fly home to Southern California on Wednesday after winning an award of merit at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. She apparently escaped from her travel cage while it was on the tarmac and was last spotted bolting toward the marshlands surrounding the airport.

Jesse Winters, a spokeswoman with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said whippets in general were not likely to approach people.

"With this particular breed of dog, they don't tend to come up to just anybody," Winters said. "It's best if someone were to see the dog not to chase it. The whippet is a sight hound. They travel great distances and don't tend to come up to anybody."

The official search for Vivi has been called off, but Albrecht said there's a good likelihood she will be located. "In this case, with the news coverage, I think there's a really good chance of getting the dog back," she said. "It's just a matter of isolating where the dog is and [when she's] calmed down enough."

According to Animal Care and Control of New York City, last year 9,023 dogs came into shelters in New York alone. An estimated 6 million to 8 million dogs and cats are taken to shelters nationwide every year, according to the Humane Society of the United States.