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September/October 2010
VOLUME 10 • NUMBER 3

In Their Debt

Hope for Lost Pets
by Shelley Bueche

at Albrecht, former K-9 officer and founder of Missing Pet Partnership, lost her bloodhound, A.J. Albrecht responded in the way that most pet owners do – she panicked and began searching for A.J. immediately. She called the local sheriff’s department and was shocked to learn that the same team of searchers that Kat and A.J. helped to track lost hikers on several occasions would not help look for A.J. They told her that they only sent out crews to search for missing persons, not missing pets. She then took matters into her own hands by contacting a good friend who owned Kea, a golden retriever and search dog. Kea sniffed A.J.’s bedding and immediately went into search-mode and found A.J. within 20 minutes. “In my mind, I assumed I would never see A.J. again. That then caused the big paradigm shift,” Albrecht recalls. “Why aren’t we training dogs to find pets?”

Albrecht had a vision of forming a national non-profit organization devoted to finding lost pets, and eventually she took the bold initial steps in dedicating her life to the cause of reuniting lost pets with their owners. Another goal was educating others on tips and strategies to hunt for lost pets. Despite a few minor setbacks along the way, Albrecht proceeded with undaunted determination, and Missing Pet Partnership (MPP) became an official non-profit agency in December 2001.