Pet detectives: Inside the booming business using ex-cops, drones and surveillance to find missing pets

For almost a year, Giovanna Sellitti has lived in hope that somewhere in Melbourne, another family is loving her dog so much they cannot bear to give him back.

Her toy cavoodle Alfie vanished from her mother’s Thomastown property in September 2025 while Ms Sellitti was overseas.

The anxious pup was later photographed alone in Reservoir and also spotted on CCTV outside an RSL.

He hasn’t been seen since.

Alfie was almost seven when he disappeared and will turn eight next month.

His microchip remains flagged as missing, his disappearance has been reported to Victoria Police and Ms Sellitti has created multiple social media pages dedicated to finding him.

The 33-year-old believes someone may have picked Alfie up and decided to keep him.

“I think a family has taken him in,” she said.

“Maybe they initially didn’t know he was missing, or they intended to return him, but then they fell in love with him.

“We just hope he is being so loved that they don’t want to return him.”

Ms Sellitti is offering a large cash reward and said Alfie can even be handed to a trusted third party anonymously.

“If they don’t want to return him directly to us, we’re happy for them to meet with a trusted third party,” she said.

“No questions asked. We just want him home.”

Enter Australia’s real-life pet detectives.

At the professional end is Arthur & Co Pet Detectives, founded by Sydney mother-of-two Anne-Marie Curry in 2017 after her own experiences losing beloved pets.

The national operation receives more than 1000 inquiries a year and takes on up to 200 cases, with owners sometimes spending thousands of dollars trying to find a missing pet.

Its investigators include former police officers and detectives with backgrounds in missing persons and homicide, private investigators, drone pilots and online forensics specialists.

“We have former police, some of whom were detectives or inspectors who worked on missing people, homicides and missing children,” Ms Curry said.

“We have private investigators, thermal drone pilots, drain endoscopes, robots and online forensics.

“Then we have your traditional gumshoe methods – house-to-house inquiries, looking for CCTV, posters, flyers and geo-targeted advertising.”

Ms Curry said the company had maintained about a 80 per cent success rate, with some mysteries solved within minutes and its longest successful investigation taking about a year.

Ms Curry’s interest in missing pets dates back to when she was five and her family’s rough collie disappeared from their hobby farm.

She remembers later driving past a property with her mother and seeing a Lassie dog she was convinced was hers but having no way to prove it.

Three decades later, a tradesman left a window open and her rescue cat escaped.

“I thought, ‘This is shocking. How is there not a dedicated, comprehensive service for missing or stolen animals?’” Ms Curry said.

“So I created one.

“We model it very much on police methodology.”

In one case, Ms Curry was called after four chihuahuas vanished from the NSW home of Suzie Meakins while she was interstate for Christmas.

The dogs had belonged to Ms Meakins’ late best friend, who had entrusted his “girls” to her before he died.

Ms Curry said a tip-off ultimately led to what she described as “hostage-style negotiations” before all four dogs were handed over and returned home.

And while Ms Curry has been asked to find more than dogs and cats, there are limits.

She once knocked back a request to use her dachshund Arthur to track a missing python.

“I just had visions of this python strangling Arthur,” she said.

“Arthur was basically like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

“I thought, ‘This is too risky.’”

Volunteer groups also play a role in recovering lost animals.

Sherri Johnston and Tracey Kelly co-founded the Victorian arm of registered charity Milly’s Search, Trap & Reunite, which specialises in finding and safely recovering missing pets.

Ms Johnston, 51, works full-time in procurement but said the charity had effectively become a second full-time job.

“We’re consistently on the phone with each other and with owners, strategising and looking at maps to work out where the animal could go, where to look, where to place cameras and traps,” she said.

“We go out searching on foot as well.

“We love helping people and reuniting their lost dogs. We can’t find all of them, but we’re always still looking.”

The group uses live cameras, drones, thermal monoculars and traps but Ms Johnston said some of its most effective weapons were decidedly low-tech.

“Social media is a great tool, but not everybody is on social media,” she said.

“We actually get more sightings and information from flyers and letterbox drops.

“Sometimes you’ve got to step back to the old ways.”

Like Arthur & Co, the charity deals predominantly with animals that are lost, and Ms Johnston said establishing whether a pet had actually been stolen could be difficult without CCTV or witnesses.

She said some dogs were not deliberately stolen from their homes but escaped first and were then picked up by somebody who decided to keep them.

“There are dogs that go missing and are never found,” she said.

“Whether someone has kept them or something else has happened, sometimes you just don’t know.

“That’s the hardest part.”

Victoria Police says pet theft remains relatively uncommon, with incident numbers stable over the past decade.

Crime Statistics Agency figures show 252 domestic pets were recorded as stolen property items in Victoria in the year to March, down from 298 the previous year. The annual figure has fluctuated between 236 and 319 over the past decade.

Victoria Police said pet theft numbers had remained stable over the past 10 years and some suspected thefts ultimately turned out to be missing pets.

“However, we recognise how much pets mean to their owners and understand the significant distress this type of offending can cause,” a spokesperson said.

“While our intelligence suggests a number of reported pet thefts are later withdrawn after pets are returned or found to have been missing rather than stolen, Victoria Police will not hesitate to investigate matters where theft is substantiated and hold offenders to account.”

Ms Curry said separating suspicion from evidence was crucial when an owner believed their pet had been taken.

“Missing pets need to be treated like missing children,” she said.

“You can’t assume. You have to question everything and follow the facts and the evidence – not what you think, what you feel or what a psychic told you.

“You have to methodically rule out the possible scenarios based on facts and evidence.”

She also said persistent fears that missing dogs were routinely stolen for illegal dog fighting or used as “bait dogs” were overblown.

“I think that’s a lot of fear-mongering,” Ms Curry said.

“I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade and there are very, very few cases that have been as a result of dog fighting. I’ve done one.

“These cases do exist, but they’re not common, and often people will go to that conclusion when there is absolutely no evidence that is what happened to that particular animal.”

Missing Pet Investigators Australia, where Alfie’s disappearance has been shared, is run by Victorian volunteer Alison Praetz.

Ms Praetz, a disability support worker and former special education teacher, said she receives hundreds of requests for help and asks owners who can afford it for a $50 donation.

Much of her work involves creating and circulating missing-pet posters online, generating sightings and encouraging devastated owners to keep searching.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Ms Praetz said.

“But if you put the time in, your chances of getting the dog back really increase.”

Ms Sellitti still believes Alfie will come home.

“Each day is different. You just go where the grief takes you,” she said.

“I definitely still believe we’ll get him back.

“It will just take one person to see him and let us know.”