So your dog goes missing and you and your family are sick with worry. Who you gonna call? Unlike the gang at Ghostbusters, Al and Alesha MacLellan of Petsearchers Canada are completely serious in their mission to reunite house pets and their human families. As with so many good business ideas, their Surrey-based company sprang out of their own experience: in this case, a frustrating search for their own dog a few years ago.
“For a few weeks, our entire life was put on hold,” said Alesha. “We spent thousands of dollars on advertising, posters, chasing around following up on sightings, trying to get into a position to catch him.Animal control doesn’t help, the SPCA doesn’t help; that’s just not what they do. Basically, there is no help.”
The couple eventually found their dog ... and a new business that appears to be without competitors across Canada. Certainly, the timing couldn’t have been better. Both Al’s day job running a car sales lot and Alesha’s realty business had fallen on hard times during the recession, so they were ready for a change.
Petsearchers uses traditional methods, including two tracking bloodhounds, traps and snares, and food to lure back lost pets. But the couple has also stocked up on state-of-the-art surveillance equipment such as night-vision goggles, cameras and thermal imaging devices in their searches for about 300 pets to date.
In fact, it was modern technology that recently saved Carlos, a four-month-old chihuahua, from an unpleasant fate in Surrey’s Tynehead Park. Carlos’ owner, carpenter Devon Wood, had just let him off the leash to run with Wood’s two other dogs when he bolted for the bush. Wood, joined by friends and fellow dogwalkers, searched in vain for Carlos all afternoon. Fearing that the tiny 3½-pound puppy would fall prey to the park’s resident coyotes, Wood stayed out all night searching and waiting for Carlos to come back.
The next day, an exhausted Wood made the call to the MacLellans. The couple interviewed him, worked up a behaviourial profile on Carlos and even checked out satellite photos of the park before beginning their search. After reviewing the facts, Al decided thermal imaging was in order. Within 15 minutes, he found the dog, cowering in the brambles and returned him home to Wood’s 11-year-old daughter.
“Isabella had been very distraught,” said Wood. “I don’t think I have seen her happier or more relieved in her life. This is her little baby. Without Al, there is no way we would have found him.”
The MacLellans’ business recently got a big break when the couple was invited onto CBC’s Dragons’ Den to pitch for investors. They persuaded David Chilton, author of The Wealthy Barber, to invest after he saw the business potential of searching for some of the estimated 30,000 pets that go missing annually in Metro Vancouver.
The MacLellans plan to use the capital injection to search for partners across Canada and to offer a broader range of services, including aerial services and social media tools.
“We’re not getting rich, but then it’s not all about the money,” said Al. “It’s about helping people find their pets.” •
