Federal Way group on trail of missing pets

Fireworks had been going off all weekend, and Tammy and Bruno and Sukhi had been reported missing.

Kat Albrecht kept a running tally Sunday outside the Seattle Animal Shelter. Finding lost pets is the goal of her organization, Federal Way-based Missing Pet Partnership.

Starting Sunday, she teamed with the city-run shelter to offer help to owners whose pets had disappeared in the wake of the Fourth of July holiday, when fireworks can send pets scurrying in a panic: Last year, officials say, the shelter population doubled, from half-full to full, in the days following July 4.

"We can't go out and look for every missing dog, but we can give people the tools and advice for what to do," Albrecht said.

The Fourth of July, when people leave windows and doors open to counter the summer heat, is an especially troublesome time. The noise and unpredictability of fireworks can cause chaos: Shelter workers have heard of dogs diving through windows or chewing their way through screen doors.

"Fireworks seem to come out of nowhere," shelter volunteer manager Kara Main-Hester said. As opposed to the noise dogs would associate with an object they see falling off a table, "they're unable to visualize cause and effect."

Which is, perhaps, what sent Tammy and Bruno and Sukhi running. By midafternoon Sunday, Tammy, a shepherd mix, had been reunited with her owners.

But Bruno, a pit-bull mix, and Sukhi, a Chihuahua, were still on the loose.

Cristien Storm, Sukhi's owner, sat in a lawn chair under Albrecht's tent at the animal shelter, distraught. On Friday, she had noticed that early-weekend fireworks didn't seem to bother Sukhi.

But later that day she found her front gate unlatched and the dog she had owned for a year and a half missing.

She and her husband, Ajax Wood, knocked on neighbors' doors and posted fliers. Storm was up all night on the Fourth crying, more upset with every fireworks blast.

Microchip implants

Luckily, Sukhi was "chipped" — identifiable via a microchip implant. Already, four of Sunday's six missing dogs had been traced to or reunited with their owners; all were chipped.

At a minimum, animal advocates suggest outfitting pets with collars and ID tags. But Jordan said that while all county outdoor pets are required to be licensed, fewer than half of Seattle's estimated 120,000 dogs and 250,000 cats actually are.

On the Fourth of July last year, Missing Pet Partnership assisted with 43 missing-pet cases at the county animal shelter in Kent, helping to reunite 14 owners with their pets.

They used one of Albrecht's recommended strategies: waving brightly colored signs bearing the missing dog's photo at major intersections in the neighborhood where the pet was last seen.

On Sunday, as several yellow-vested volunteers headed out with Storm and Wood to wave those "lost dog" signs, Albrecht instructed them to hold the signs high and face traffic.

"Good luck," she said. "Now go out there and find their dog."

Police training

If it sounds like the end of a police-department roll call, it's because Albrecht was once a police officer. In central California, she trained police bloodhounds. When one of them was lost, she trained a search-and-rescue dog to find it and wondered: Why aren't we training dogs to find lost pets?

Albrecht has trained more than 100 "pet detectives" — human and canine — since she launched Missing Pet Partnership in 2001. She moved to the Seattle area in April 2008.

On Sunday, with a plastic box labeled "2009 Lost Pet Case Files" nearby, she compiled data on each new case, from the dog's size to how far away from their homes the located dogs had been found.

"It's very CSI-ish," she said of her work, referring to the forensics-focused television series.

Eighty percent of small, friendly dogs that disappear are found less than a mile from their homes, Albrecht told Storm.

"I cannot imagine he'd have gotten very far," Storm replied."It's really just getting someone to turn him in."

Shelter director Don Jordan said it's usually several days before people come to the shelter looking for lost pets. Initially, "most people are scrambling within their neighborhood," he said. Some are sure their pets are just hiding and will eventually emerge.

Storm and Wood weren't going to wait. Before long, they were waving their signs at 23rd Avenue South and South Jackson Street, in Seattle's Central District.

Within 15 minutes, a neighbor who lives three blocks from the couple pulled over.

I think I have your dog, she said.

Sukhi and his happy owners were reunited minutes later.

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com