All Good News

Meet Molly, The First Dog Trained To Find And Rescue Missing Cats

May 6, 2017

A two-year-old Cocker Spaniel is the world's first cat detection dog.

Meet Molly.

ThePetDetective / Facebook

Molly works for The Pet Detectives, based in Guildford, England. Her job is to rescue missing felines.

Firm director Colin Butcher came up with the idea in 2014 due to the dozens of phone calls he was getting a week about missing cats.

"I worked in the police as a detective inspector for many years, and had seen dogs search for drugs and bombs and help with murder investigations," Butcher said. "I figured, if a dog can be trained to find amphetamines, then it can be trained to find cats."

ThePetDetective / Facebook

Butcher rescued Molly after seeing an ad on Gumtree for an 18-month-old Cocker Spaniel that "needs a good home, cannot cope." She had three owners in under two years.

After eight months of training with medical detection dogs, Molly broke away and specialized in finding missing cats.

"We give her a scent sample from the house where the cat normally lives, and then she's trained to match that," explained Butcher. "It only needs to be tiny scent too."

Credit: The Guardian

Molly has helped rescue 11 cats so far this year, and The Pet Detective's search success has increased by a third.

"Many people said that training a dog to rescue cats was crazy; that all dogs chased cats and it couldn't be done," Butcher said. "Nothing has felt quite so rewarding as seeing it work. People are fascinated when they watch Molly at work, but she's not fussed. She still doesn't know that those things with four legs that she searches for are called cats. To her, it is just her favorite game."