Unlike Jim Carrey’s goofy Ace Ventura character, the man dubbed by China’s media as the nation’s first pet detective is a stoney-faced animal lover who solves cases with the help of high-tech gear worth thousands of dollars.

With dogged determination, Sun has reunited around 1,000 missing pets with their owners since he launched his business seven years ago.

Clients pay 8,000 yuan ($1,130) for the service provided by his company, which has 10 employees and is based in the eastern city of Shanghai.

Sun often gets calls from anguished pet owners in the middle of the night and rushes to cities and towns across the nation to help.

Dog ownership was banned as bourgeois vanity under Chairman Mao Zedong, but Chinese society’s views of pets have changed and there are now 91.5 million cats and dogs in the country, according to Pet Fair Asia and pet website Goumin.com.