About Lost Pet Research & Recovery

Lost Pet Research and Recovery offers services, information and resources to help find missing pets.  Services offered include lost pet consultations, on-site searches, rental of surveillance equipment and traps, and assistance catching hard-to-trap lost pets.  

Located in western Massachusetts near Springfield.  For current service area, see On-Site Services.  Lost Pet Research also offers information and links to lots of online resources, a lost pet research blog, and an online store with lost pet guides and recommended search equipment.

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About Danielle Robertson

Lost Pet Research and Recovery is owned and operated by me, Danielle Robertson.  People often ask me how I became a pet detective.  Like most paths in life, I arrived here by a rather circuitous route.  In college I began what seemed like an exciting career as a wildlife biologist.  I studied wolves and bears in Banff National Park, Alberta, and coyotes and red foxes in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.  However, as I started my master’s degree work at the University of Wyoming, I realized that I was no longer on the right career path.  

What I really wanted was a job where I could work more closely with animals and make a positive impact on their lives.  Soon after I moved back to Massachusetts, I adopted my dog Dante and began studying for a career as a dog trainer/behavior consultant.  While researching different careers in dog training, I learned about Kat Albrecht’s work as a pet detective and her founding of Missing Pet Partnership, a national non-profit organization dedicated to reuniting lost pets with their owners.  I felt that lost pet search & recovery work was a much needed service that is sorely lacking in Massachusetts and most of New England.

In 2008, I traveled to Seattle to receive my certification as a Missing Animal Response (MAR) Technician from Missing Pet Partnership.  I began by offering my services as a lost pet search & recovery consultant (i.e. pet detective) as a volunteer, and in 2009, I launched my first business Compassionate Pet Services.  My original plan was to offer lost pet services in addition to pet sitting and dog and cat training and behavioral consultations.  However, in 2013, I decided to focus exclusively on finding lost pets and changed my business name to Lost Pet Research and Recovery.

Since I started my business, I have learned a lot about lost pet behavior both from helping people find their lost pets and from continuing to expand my own education through seminars, books, and scientific journals.  However, perhaps due to my background in wildlife biology, I have become increasingly frustrated with the lack of research behind much of the information shared and methods used in lost pet search and recovery.  

In 2011, I started a Lost Pet Research blog with several goals in mind: 1) to summarize some of the scientific literature review research that I have conducted; 2) to explore different areas of lost pet search and recovery that are controversial and suggest further research; and 3) to share the results of some of my own research projects.  I am most interested in studying: 1) the natural behavior of outdoor-access (owned) cats and free-ranging (feral or stray) cats; 2) the impact and success of using feeding stations to recover lost dogs and cats; 3) the usefulness of different technology for preventing pet loss such as GPS devices and radio-tracking; and 4) the causes of mortality for free-ranging dogs and cats, in particular the potential dangers of vehicles and predators such as coyotes and bobcats.