How drones, search dogs and advanced software helped a missing dog find his way home
Stacey Boltz/Courtesy photo
One Saturday morning, Ringo and Jax sneaked out of the house in Lake Creek near Edwards and did not return. Ringo is a 2-year-old yellow lab and Jax is a yellow lab mix rescue who his owners believe to be 9 years old. The two had gone on a few adventures alone before but always came home together.
“Ringo knows how to open doors with lever handles — like the one on our front door,” said Stacey Boltz, owner of Ringo and Jax. “As long as doors remain locked, even his best efforts remain thwarted. However, with a house full of teenage boys, doors do get left unlocked from time to time.”
Boltz said they discovered the dogs had taken themselves for a walk a few minutes after they escaped at about 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 9 and immediately dispatched a search crew on foot and by car to go find them and alerted friends and neighbors who lived in the area. After initial efforts proved unsuccessful, Boltz posted messages on Pets of Eagle County and Eagle County Classifieds social media accounts and her personal Facebook and Instagram accounts.
“Shortly after I had posted messages on Pets of Eagle County, I was contacted by Kate Hawthorn and others within Eagle and Summit County who work to retrieve lost pets. Vail Mountain Rescue was also among the first to reach out,” Boltz said.
Jax came home at dawn the next day, alone. But no signs of Ringo.
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Many pets go missing daily in Eagle County and many come home on their own, but when they don’t, it’s nice to know there is sophisticated technology that can help track the pets and entice them to come home. That technology and a person who is a professional tracker is what found Boltz’s missing dog.
“One of the volunteers told me about Bill Dohse of Find 911. He had previously helped her locate a missing animal and she felt confident Dohse could be a helpful resource,” Boltz said.
Bill Dohse is a retired law enforcement officer from Cody, Wyoming, who started working with drones as a hobby. That hobby quickly turned into search and rescue efforts using drones and highly trained search dogs to give a sense of direction of the subject missing. Find 911 travels the country helping law enforcement and government agencies and families looking for humans who have gone missing.
Dohse said the combination of the search dogs and drones together is far superior to today’s general search methods. And Dohse has some incredible technology to help him zero in on those missing.
“I wrote a grant to Amazon looking for some funding to develop our own software to find things that the drone operator can’t see with the naked eye when he’s flying that drone,” Dohse said. “Amazon loved it, and they funded the development of the software and partnered me up with a software company out of Denver called Cloud303.”
Over the last two years, the entities have developed software that can find color, shape, thermal images, anomalies and things that are out of place in nature in residential areas. All these things can be found using Amazon’s AI servers to find things that aren’t visible to the naked eye.
“For instance, if we were looking for someone that we knew that was wearing a blue coat and was maybe curled up under a tree, this software can find about a quarter-size match to that blue color sticking out or through the foliage of that tree,” Dohse said. “And then it gives us a GPS coordinate, and we can send search and rescue teams to investigate that. The same thing with thermal. When the drone operator can’t see a thermal signature with the naked eye, the software can, and it can do the same thing. So, it’s very, very effective and we’re very thankful to Amazon and Cloud303.” A photo of Ringo’s colorful collar was put into the software and used to track this minute detail.
But beyond this impressive advanced technology, Dohse said they always start with their search dogs because they give a direction of travel. Bolts provided Dohse with scent articles from Ringo.
“Our dogs are scent-specific trained. So, they’re trained to follow the most recent scent of whatever we’re looking for as far as humans or horses or other four-legged animals,” Dohse said. The search dogs and drones help set up what Dohse calls a circuit.
“Basically, it’s a perimeter. We call it a circuit because dogs will quickly create a circuit where they know where food, water and shelter are,” Dohse said. “Once we have established that circuit, the next step is to put up game cameras and feeding stations and hopefully get them on camera.”
As each day went by, Boltz and her family would hope and pray for a safe return of Ringo. Boltz has had many dogs in her life but felt especially close to Ringo.
“Ringo had always been my ‘heart dog.’ We are as connected as a dog and person could ever be. Ringo was the runt of his litter and suffered an eye injury shortly after birth which left him mostly blind in one eye and his limited vision meant he has always been a little more dependent on humans,” Boltz said. “We truly weren’t sure how well he would do in the wild.”
In addition to all the technical search knowledge Dohse has, he also knows a lot about a dog’s behavior once it goes missing and explained to Boltz how dogs really become a different animal.
“They become feral quickly but their instincts kick in and they can search for food sources and will even eat deer or elk scat, berries or dig for mice. They also become nocturnal and enter a fight-or-flight state after they realized that, ‘Oops, what did I do? Where’s my family? Where’s my house?’ They totally change mentality,” Dohse said. “Just a pure example is 90% of the time calling out your pup’s name is going to scare them away versus come, even though that’s your best friend in the whole world.”
Dohse said when he coaches family members on how to search for their dog, he’ll tell them to call out family members’ names, call your other dog’s name, but do not call your dog’s name because “for whatever reason, it scares them or they think they’re in trouble,” Dohse said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that in Ringo’s case we were close to him several times just by my search dog’s behavior. But Ringo wasn’t ready. It’s like they are in a fog and can’t think straight, and then there’s a trigger where they finally realize it is time to come home.”
Dohse recommended that they take Jax out for a hike around the circuit one more time. The circuit was in rugged terrain and the days were getting shorter and colder, but Dohse said that Jax’s scent might trigger Ringo.
The next day Ringo pawed at the back patio door and cheers erupted from those in the house waiting for him six days after he left for his adventure.
“Maybe it was Jax’s scent that had Ringo think, ‘Hey, I miss my buddy. I’m ready to come home.’ Maybe it was their scent that brought him out. I wish I had that answer, I wish I could talk to the dogs, but sometimes it just takes whatever it is, a scent or a sound or something for that pup to know it’s time.”
Boltz said they all learned a lot during this ordeal. The technology was fascinating and so were the details about dog behavior. Boltz said that they have changed the doorknobs so that the dogs won’t be able to get out on their own anytime soon. But she also added that she learned a lot about the people of the community.
“While the valley is filled with dog lovers, the proactive nature of the community reached far beyond what I had ever imagined possible,” Boltz said. “There were many moments when I was warmly reminded how much I love living in the mountains, and how powerful a small community can really be.”
