HOUSTON – Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but pet theft is enough of a problem that it has created a cottage industry of specialty private investigators, or pet detectives.
"They're looking for the higher ends, the English Bulldogs. They want the certain breeds they know there's a demand for, there's money for," said Hunter Cox, who is CEO of HC Investigations, a Houston-area private investigation firm.
Cox does not identify himself as pet detective, but does handle a wide range of work, including stolen pets.
He said that he has found that his sleuthing know-how on "workman's comp" cases and auto-theft cases is valuable in solving "dognapping" cases, too, including a relatively recent case where two bulldog puppies where stolen from a west Houston home.
"We got one of the dogs back. This lady had bought it for $2,000," Cox said.
Cox said that dogs are typically sold within three days of being stolen.
Cox provided his service free of charge in that most recent case, but had he billed for his services, he estimated the price tag would have been between $3,000 and $4,000.
Some pet-only detective agencies employ special scent dogs to track missing dogs, but two people who run such agencies in Texas cautioned that they're not registered private detectives, and that stolen dogs placed in a car are not easily trackable with scent dogs.
Both Lost Pet Detectives, based in Grapevine, Texas, and Doggone Detectives in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, travel the state working missing pet cases.
However, the bulk of the work these firms handle involves finding "lost" dogs, animals that are not stolen.
Pet owners who do not have the means or desire to hire outside agencies can benefit from online missing pet websites, and combing Craigslist ads to make sure their pet doesn't pop up "for sale."
"Chipping a dog goes a long way, too," Cox said, referring to the embeddable identification microchip available to pet owners.