CINCINNATI — Anyone who’s ever experienced it knows the panic that can come over one’s self when a pet goes missing.

For thousands of people in northern Kentucky, and Cincinnati, that feeling has been replaced by relief and elation thanks to the work of one man and his dogs. Pet Detective Jim Berns has been reuniting people with their furry friends for over two decades.

Berns likes to keep a crew of three at all times. He introduced each of them.

“They’re here in the truck, ready to go for a search,” he said. “Three is the perfect number. Because when we search, we start out with our best dog.”

There’s Walker, the lead dog. He’s a retired grand champion coonhound.

Then there’s Miami Town.

“She’s our youngest dog. She’s about one-year-old,” Berns said. “We call her Miami Town because I got a call from Miami Town that there was a hound running around on the highway. They were afraid it was gonna be hit and killed. So I went out, we tried to find the owner, was not successful, and she’s been great as a search dog. And she just loves doing searches. Don’t you?”

And then there’s Radar, the oldest, who’s close to retirement.

“We bring three dogs out on the searches. When one gets tired, we rotate through the dogs, just like you would a pitcher in a baseball game,” Berns said.

Berns has been a pet detective since 2002, and yes, he gets the jokes.

“All the time. They say you’re just like Ace Ventura,” he said, laughing. “I’m not as good with women as Ace was.”

It was Berns’ daughter who first started her own pet search service using her dog to make some extra money that inspired him to do the same. She lived in San Diego at the time.

“She calls me up and says, ‘Daddy, daddy, we’re getting calls from Ohio, you got to get a search hound,’” he said.

He was sold, and already had an affinity for hounds, having grown up around them.

“Almost any hound type dog will work,” he said.

Berns bought a house in College Hill with plenty of yard space for training, which was the next step. His daughter helped coach him.

“The training is called runaway. So, I have my hound on a leash. And I have another person with a dog on a leash, and we walk down the sidewalk together. Then the person I’m with, they get 20 or 30 feet away from me. My dog wants to be with their dog,” Berns said. “So I take a little scent of their dog, say take scent, take scent, and then my dog runs up to her dog, and then we give him a pet and a treat. Then we do 100 feet, 200, a quarter mile, and the dog almost immediately gets the idea, takes the scent, goes to find the other dog, or cat.”

Several professional organizations around the country do this kind of training. Berns and his search hounds had instant success.

“We had beginner’s luck, and we solved 13 cases in a row,” he said. “Since 2002, we’ve helped over 5,000 people get their pets back.”

He’s gone as far as Massachusetts for a search, but these days, at 76-years-old, Berns limits his searches to within an hour's drive of his home, in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Most of the time, however, his service doesn’t end in a search.

When clients call Berns, he first offers a free phone consultation.

“They don’t know what to do, they’re crying on the phone, we give them a few tasks to do. Put up some posters, make up some small handouts, get yourself up on Facebook,” he said. 

If that doesn’t work, he’ll bring the hounds to do a two-hour search. That usually costs around $600, depending on factors like location.

“During the search, about two out of ten, the dogs will track to where the dog or cat is hiding. Another 30% are found within two or three days from the work we did, the posters, the handouts, the interviews,” Berns said. “If you can’t afford the fee, don’t hire us. But if you can afford the fee, at least half of the time, you’re gonna get your pet back.”

With all the success also, sadly, comes occasional heartbreak.

“When we track to a pet that’s been killed by a coyote or some other disaster, and you’ve got a client there bawling their eyes out, and you have to put their dog or cat in a body bag and take it back so they can bury it, I won’t say it’s equivalent to PTSD, but it’s definitely not a pleasant experience,” he said.

Often, he’ll find pets two or three houses away. His record, though, was finding a dog 25 miles from where it went missing.

Berns requires his clients and any volunteers they have to help with the search.

“People are super appreciative. They don’t know what to do, they feel lost. We give them directions. None of our clients have found their dog or cat sitting on the couch crying,” he said. “They feel empowered and like they’re doing everything they can to get their pet back. Part of our technique is a little therapy for the client, so that they know they’re doing their best.”

Through the years, he’s cycled through eight search hounds. Losing them when they pass away never gets easier.

“I nearly cry when it happens. They get so old that it’s just obvious they’re suffering too much. And they had to be euthanized,” he said.

Even in his 70s, Berns said he still has the same passion the dogs do after 758 searches. But he is slowing down, and seemingly, so is the demand.

“The number of searches we’re doing has dropped off,” he said. “I try to defy nature, but nature always wins.”

For now, though, he’ll keep fighting to make families whole again.

He said the best advice he can give is to make sure pets have a collar with a phone number. He said that leads to 90% of pets being found before he ever has to search.