by There’s dangling a treat to get a dog’s attention and then there’s dangling a treat from a drone in order to save a dog’s life!
Rescuers trying to save Millie, a 3-year-old Jack Russell Terrier, had to resort to dangling a sausage from a drone to lure the dog to safety after she was at risk of drowning.
The “crazy idea” came after time was running out to save Millie from the encroaching sea after she had wandered onto the mudflats located in Hampshire, England.
For days, Millie had evaded police officers, firefighters and coastguards, who had all attempted to find and rescue her after she had slipped her leash and run away from her owner on January 13, 2022.
Denmead Drone Search & Rescue had been called by Millie’s owner to help just after Millie had gone missing and been spotted on the mudflats near Emsworth.
But the marshy land made it impossible for them to follow so they contacted Solent Coastguard, who deployed their Mud Rescue Teams. Mud Rescue is equipped with specialized equipment in order to traverse the very marshy terrain.
The following day, Millie was again spotted in the marshland. After a few hours of trying to locate her both the coastguard team and drone team were unable to find her.
On day three, Denmead Drone Search & Rescue sent up a drone again and this time spotted her. They wrote on Facebook that she was looking “very calm on the marshland.”
“We discussed the use of a cage, but this was quickly dismissed due to 1 getting a cage 800m across sinking mud, and 2 the risk that could be opposed on Millie if we couldn’t reach her before the tide came in,” they wrote.
So they sent a few volunteers out in kayaks but Millie had moved away to an inaccessible corner of the marsh. Millie would only walk on the grassy parts not muddy parts. After talking with a few local experts, however, the team learned some bad news. If she wasn’t rescued in a few hours, she would be “cut off, and the area she was in underwater, with drowning highly likely. We had to think fast, one of our fully qualified drone pilots, suggested attaching food to the drone, to try and lure her out of the danger area.”
The drone team did some quick checking of CAA regulations and figured they had enough leeway to attach a 2 ounce sausage to the drone. A local resident living on the beach supplied the sausage. Chris Taylor, the chair of the Denmead Drone Search and Rescue team told the BBC that, “The woman cooked them up for us, and we attached them with string.”
“I would say she [Millie] was in quite a fair amount of danger,” Elliott Exton told CBC As it Happens. “The water coming back in is a big risk to her and it’s kind of a miracle that she survived that long already.”
So they flew the drone out to Millie hoping for the best. “We didn’t think it would work, but it did,” wrote the group on Facebook. “We managed to lure Millie 300m over into a safety zone. Luckily she stayed in that area so we had prevented her from possibly drowning.”
Taylor said the were relieved to have gotten her to safety. “If we hadn’t had got her away from that area, the tide would have come in, and she would have been at risk of drowning,” he said. “It was something we had never tried before — the sausages were the last resort, as we couldn’t reach her by kayak or any other means.”
With night falling the team at least knew Millie was in a safe area but they still could not get to her. They would soon learn Millie had slipped back out onto an area with roads.
The following day Millie was sighted on a road but rescuers had a difficult time getting to her because she was seriously spooked.
Finally, when she was seen walking around an industrial area, Denmead Drone Search and Rescue team asked her family to go to the area. Emma Oakes, Millie’s owner, asked her father to go and he brought his dog, Jasper, and Millie recognized them. She was spotted “charging up to the owner’s father and his dog, tail wagging happy as Larry,” wrote Denmead Drone. “Millie was quickly secured in the car.”
For Oakes, she is feeling immense relief and gratitude for all the people involved in Millie’s rescue. “Relief just poured over me. It was just absolutely fantastic to have her home,” she told The Guardian. And she’s not surprised sausages played a part in Millie’s return.
“Millie really likes food, and she’ll eat anything you give her…raw carrots, cucumber — but she much prefers sausages,” she added. “Meat is her favorite food, so dangling a sausage was probably the best thing they could lure her with.”
As for the unconventional technique, Denmead Drone Search and Rescue says they might consider using sausages again if the situation calls for it.
