Sherlock Bones to the rescue: a real-life Ace Ventura goes to the hounds - and other lost pets - John Keane

Many years ago, John Keane got a call from a screenwriter looking for some free information. It seems the writer was developing a script about a pet detective, and John was the only real-life counterpart to his lead character, an oddball guy named Ace Ventura.

"I was working on my own script at the time," says Keane, "and both of our scripts were passed around Hollywood for years before Jim Carrey finally came along and made a box-office smash out of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective." According to Keane, had his script been the one that finally made it to the silver screen, Carrey's character would not have been quite so buffoonish.

"There is nothing really funny about losing a pet," says Keane, who has helped thousands of people find their pets with a service he's dubbed Sherlock Bones. He is a man who knows how emotionally trying the ordeal of searching for a lost pet can be. "Of course, all pets should be collared and tagged, but at such a vulnerable time, pet owners don't need to have somebody pile on the guilt," he says.

Keane got started as a pet detective back in the mid-1970s when he noticed an ad offering $1,000 for the return of a lost Chihuahua.

"The odd thing about that experience was that when I called the number, nobody answered, and that got me to thinking maybe the trauma of losing a pet made it difficult for the owners to think clearly. I mean, if you're going to offer a $1,000 reward and you can't be home to answer calls, you should at least have an answering machine. At any rate, it seemed to me like people who had lost a pet might be able to use some professional help."

Following that incident, Keane visited a few animal shelters for advice and was appalled at the enormous number of pets not being claimed or adopted. Gradually, he got more and more interested in the problem and the poor way people were going about trying to find their animals, and soon he found himself in business. After struggling for a few years making "pound rounds" with photos of animals and generally doing a lot of legwork, Keane began to standardize and perfect his search procedures. Experience had shown him that trying to identify lost animals was a task best left to owners, although even they could sometimes have trouble positively identifying their own pets. Keane recalls one situation he observed at a shelter, where a woman was insisting that her lost female cat was in the cage.

"Lady," the attendant said, "that there is a male cat."

"It certainly is not," the lady retorted. "Don't you think I can recognize my own cat? Just look at that one spot on her nose. Now take her out of the cage."

"Suit yourself," said the man, who could see by the animal's behavior that it obviously was her cat. But before he presented the animal to he he felt obliged to lift the cat's tail and point out two round, furry appendages as irrefutable evidence of masculinity. "See them things, lady?" he remarked. "Like I said before, this is a male cat."

Keane says incidents like this and the one with the Chihuahua point up the fact that many pet owners can use a little help, not only in protecting their pets but in making them easier to locate if they are lost or stolen. Besides being sure of their sex, he says, owners should never allow pets to roam unsupervised and should make sure they are always properly collared and tagged. Microchipping and tattooing are other ID options (see "Lost & Found Goes High Tech," March/April 1997 issue).

Author of a book chronicling his early days and how he developed his recovery methods, Keane has traveled all over the country to personally help people find their pets.

As the only national professional pet detective, Keane has been hired to conduct searches by everyone from wealthy businessmen to the Hollywood elite. Once, he even heard from his fictional counterpart on the set of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

"Right before the movie came out, I got a call from Jim and Melissa Carrey," he says. "They had lost their Jack Russell terrier, and they hired me to find it -- which I did. A little while later, the casting director for the movie called, and I helped her find her pet as well."

Today, most of his efforts are spent dispensing advice over the telephone and maintaining an Internet Web site full of helpful hints on how to keep your pet safe and how to conduct a proper search.

If all else fails and you feel you need serious professional help, Keane will guide you through the search with a strategic plan for a fee between $100 and $250. Services included in the plan range from printed fliers and posters to direct mailings, help with ad composition, and instruction on the most effective search methods.

"What it boils down to is that finding a pet is like running a business, and a business cannot be successful without advertising and a good business plan," says Keane. "You don't find your pet by personally looking for the needle in the haystack, you find your pet by leveraging yourself through the eyes and ears of other people. After 20 years of doing this, we know there are logical places to look, certain people to talk to, and we have a formula we apply to each individual case."