(WKBN) — Two-year-old Honey is a lab/pit bull mix, and tonight, she’s back in her loving family’s arms after spending almost three days on the run.
Honey escaped after the family was involved in a car accident late Sunday night in Boardman.
Scared, she bolted from the scene.
“It was horrific, I didn’t know if I would ever get her back,” said Honey’s owner Jennifer Sharp. “As soon as those sirens went off, she got spooked. She ran.”
With several sightings, they took to the air to try and find their missing dog.
Zach Dzurinda and his company Vantage Point Drones teamed up with Josh Nicholas and Diversified Drone to scan the sky for the missing pooch.
“You can only see so much from the ground,” Dzurinda said. “It’s a big difference when you’re flying from the air.”
Having a tool like this is a huge resource. Not only does it give you a set of eyes from the sky, but with a thermal camera, it takes looking for lost pets to a whole new level.
“With having two drone pilots in this operation was when our batteries get low we have to swap out, we deploy the other drone in the air so we can have eyes on her at all times,” Nicholas said.
The team zeroed in on Honey, spotting her running across I-680 and even tracking her as she ran across a frozen pond in a nearby neighborhood. But no one could get close enough on the ground to call Honey home.
“If they didn’t have that extra eye on her, we would’ve never known where she was,” Sharp said.
After days of hunting, Honey was spotted hunkering down Wednesday morning, and her owner was able to get close enough to begin calling her over.
“I knew if I just had that one chance with her, that she would come to me,” Sharp said.
Following a few tense moments, Honey and her family were reunited.
“It meant the world to me,” Sharp said. “This is my best friend. If I lost her, I felt like I lost a piece of me.”
A family now back together, when it seemed like time was running out.
“Sometimes it brings tears to your eyes, just seeing that dog trust their owner and recognize them after multiple days of being missing and scared and cold in the woods,” Nicholas said.
Losing your pet can leave you distraught and heartbroken, and you’ll do anything to get them back. Sadly, that’s what some people Prey on.
While on the hunt for another missing dog on Thursday, Dzurinda said the dog’s owner received a call from a suspicious number– saying they had her missing cocker spaniel, Theo.
Sadly, it was a scam. And it’s something that happens far too often.
“That’s a scam. You know it’s a scam,” Dzurinda said. “You should never, ever have to give up money up front before you know where your dog is. It happens more often than it doesn’t. It’s very sad to see that happen.
Fortunately, there’s a happy ending.. Roughly an hour after the fake call, Theo was spotted in a field and is also safely back home tonight after being spotted from the sky.
#Lost #dogs #reunited #owner #skyward
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