Missing Dog Search, Haldon Forest

A call came in during the evening. A family spaniel, black and white, had gone missing near Haldon Forest and had not come back.

Forest is hard ground to search. It is big, the tracks are long, and a small dog in undergrowth is invisible to someone standing twenty metres away. We took the callout the same evening.

Haldon Forest, on the high ground south west of Exeter, along with the tracks and open ground around it.

A search over the forest and the ground around it, flown while people searched on foot below.

What a drone brings to a job like this is coverage and angle. One aircraft can look across a lot of ground and see into places nobody standing on a track can see, and anything useful goes straight back to the people searching.

The spaniel was found safe and reunited with his owner the same evening.

We are not going to dress that up as the drone finding him single handed. A search like this is several people covering ground at once and the aircraft is one part of it. What counts is that he went home that night.

Search callouts and lost pet searches are work we actively take on. If an animal or a person is missing in woodland or open country around Exeter and Devon, call us. We will tell you straight whether a flight is likely to help, and how quickly we can be there.