Chad Tavernia was at home in Malone, N.Y., one Saturday in January when he received a call from a couple whose puppy had escaped their yard. They had searched the snowy woods behind their home, but the puppy, Aurora, had vanished.
Nearly a day had gone by and temperatures were below freezing. The couple, Paul Conto and Kathern McPherson, were desperate to know: Could Mr. Tavernia find Aurora?
Such calls are common for Mr. Tavernia, 44, the founder of North Country Drone Search & Recovery, a small business he runs using his drone to find missing pets. So he drove about seven miles to the couple’s home in Burke, N.Y., and launched his thermal-imaging drone into the sky.
After about 90 minutes, the drone detected a heat signal in a cornfield nearly 3.5 miles away. It was Aurora, an American bully-golden retriever mix, nestled deep in the snow. Speaking to Mr. Conto over the phone, Mr. Tavernia guided him to her location, and she was brought home safely that day.
“I was confident I’d be able to find her,” Mr. Tavernia said.
Most of the calls Mr. Tavernia receives are for missing dogs, he said, but there have been some calls for missing cats, too. In the past year, he has found 42 dogs.
“I am looking for somebody’s pet that they love dearly,” he said. “There is actually a vulnerable animal out there whose life is in the balance.”
Mr. Tavernia, a retired New York State Police investigator, purchased a thermal-imaging drone in November 2023. He started a Facebook page to post pictures of the bobcats, deer and other wild animals he would find with his drone. Then, in January 2024, he received a call from a woman in Berkshire, Vt., whose dog had been missing for six days.
Mr. Tavernia drove to Vermont and drew on his police skills, collecting every detail about the dog — a Vizsla named Otis — and its last known movements. “I said, ‘If I can get this drone over top of the dog, I can almost guarantee I will find him,’” Mr. Tavernia recalled.
The drone’s technology essentially turns heat signals into something humans can see, and it allows Mr. Tavernia to quickly search hundreds of acres, including densely packed areas, from high in the sky.
About 90 minutes into his search, Mr. Tavernia located Otis in a swamp a mile from his home and helped reunite him with his owner.
Days later, he tracked down Max, a 4-month-old German shepherd named Max who had been lost in the Adirondack Mountains for several days.
“Without him, I don’t think I’d have my best friend with me right now” Max’s owner, Ryan Luebbers of Lyon Mountain, N.Y., said of Mr. Tavernia.
More calls from anxious dog owners came in, and word of Mr. Tavernia’s services spread.
“I knew it would serve a purpose,” he said of his drone. “I did not really think it would transition to me going out and looking for dozens of dogs.”
In one search and rescue last May, Mr. Tavernia hiked 1,900 feet up Catamount Mountain in the Adirondacks at night to find a husky named Echo who took off after her leash snapped while on a walk. The dog’s owner had difficulty navigating the steep terrain where Echo was found, so Mr. Tavernia retrieved the dog himself.
It was about 1:15 a.m. by the time he reached Echo, who was trapped on a ledge, and a thunderstorm was rolling in. “The excitement I could sense in Echo when she knew she was no longer alone stranded on the mountain made it all worth it,” he wrote on Facebook.
While Mr. Tavernia has found 42 dogs, there are dozens of others he hasn’t tracked down, he said, adding that some had eventually made their way back to their owners.
Most calls he receives are because of electric fence failures, or because a dog was new to the home, spotted a wild animal or got out without a leash, he said. He charges anywhere from $300 for a local search to $600 for searches that require more travel.
After finding a dog, Mr. Tavernia sends its location to the owner, who retrieves the dog while on the phone with him. Mr. Tavernia said he used his drone to provide real-time feedback to owners, and coached them on coaxing their dogs back using “sweet baby talk.” Some animals are skittish and take off initially, he said. “It has to be done very delicately,” he said.
That’s what happened with Aurora, who bolted deeper into the woods after Mr. Conto arrived and called her name. With Mr. Tavernia’s guidance, Mr. Conto called out softly to Aurora, including using her nickname, Little Bear.
“Once I spotted her and saw her little tail wagging, it was awesome,” Mr. Conto, 44, said.
Aurora was hungry and cold, and they later discovered one deer tick on her, Mr. Conto said. But otherwise, she was unharmed.
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