Honey got out early in the morning and was gone all day.
People kept seeing her. That is the part that wears you down — she was spotted again and again through the day, and every single time, nobody could get close enough to catch her. A frightened dog does not want to be caught, not even by the people looking for her. By the end of the day she had dropped out of sight completely.
We got the call after wrapping up a roof inspection, and came straight over with the thermal drone.
Fifteen minutes after we were in the air, we had eyes on her: tucked into a field, well off the roads, in a spot nobody driving around was ever going to see. That is the whole problem this camera solves. She was not hiding well. She was hiding somewhere a search from a vehicle cannot reach.
Then came the part that actually got her home. We put the drone's spotlight on her and used it to guide her owner straight to the spot — and her owner trekked into that field in the dark and got her. We can find a dog from the air. Somebody who loves her still has to go in after her.
Honey went home safe that night.
Somebody in the comments on the post put it better than we could:
“a 12 hour ordeal that was resolved in a matter of minutes”— someone in the comments on our post
That is the honest math of this work. No magic to it — a camera that sees heat, put in the air, before a scared dog gets any further from home.