Jamie Katz–who’s worked as a Fort Lauderdale-based real-life pet detective for a decade—recalls growing up amidst a family that always lived with cats and dogs, as well as her initial efforts helping animals while regularly driving along a prescribed route.
Katz notes that around this time, she thought to herself that an ideal professorial path would involve working with animals combined with investigation.
Over time, she manifested this vision by becoming a private investigator, then—after a nutty, disappointing experience she shared when her friend hired a pet detective who was lackluster and flaky–Katz re-shaped her career as a pet detective. Often assisted by tracking dogs.
She enthuses about her scent specific tracking dogs, longtime assistants Fletcher (a Terrier mix) and Gable (Brittany Spaniel)—and newest member of the team, Lois (English Springer Spaniel)— describing how, and when, she deploys them on cases.
When I asked what difference breed seems to make for tracking dogs, Katz emphatically responds that while she believes there are key attributes—including: is the dog happy? Food motivated? —breed is not pivotal.
She outlines how she approaches a new case, drawing on a call she received earlier that day, adding that it’s impractical to initially estimate the time she’ll need to solve a case—there are simply too many variables.
Katz unveils “Rosie,” the app she created to find missing pets. Noting the name refers to an important black Lab, she suggests “Rosie” may be the last app needed to locate lost pets.
It stands as one map for all lost and found pets in the world, a global central location, obviating the need to search through endless lost pet pages, groups, platforms websites and other online locations.
To use Rosie, it’s free to post found pets in the world, while it costs $10 to post a lost pet. For now, to save the $10, you may use the promo code KATZ (all caps).
Katz reports on some notable recent cases, including that of Susi, a brown toy poodle who went missing in Hollywood, FL, and unfolded into a wild and wooly narrative. It included Susi escaping her family’s business, being stolen from the Good Samaritan who first found her, Katz spending hours engaged in meticulous detective work, and (spoiler alert!), the case is solved by the jerk who snatched Susi being arrested for domestic violence.
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