A golden retriever who’d been missing for several months was reunited with her family after being tracked down in rural Colorado with the assistance of a police drone.
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on their Facebook page on Sunday that they’d managed to close the three-month case of the missing pet on Sunday after FCSO UAS team was able to locate the 3-year-old dog tucked away in some tall grass using one of their drones.
“She is safely on her way home, and the UAS team was able to practice some very valuable search and rescue techniques with our drone,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.
Taylor Salazar, the owner of the “classic goldie”, told KRDO that her pup originally went missing back in June.
Her father had been driving with the dog alongside him when he suffered a seizure and crashed the car. The chaos that ensued from the crash spooked Farrah, so much so that she scampered away into the rural farmland and was only spotted occasionally in the weeks that followed.
Ms Salazar, who gifted Farrah as a companion for her husband when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2019, says that the dog’s absence was sorely felt.
“We needed something to brighten up our household. And she did just that. He was in love with her the minute he saw her,” she said to KRDO in an interview, before adding that her husband died three months after the golden retriever was welcomed into their home.
The only glimmers of hope that Ms Salazar got in the waning months of summer were the occasional reports from nearby residents who spotted the 3-year-old dog on surveillance camera footage. In some grabs, neighbours could see that the dog was sneaking onto their property to lap up sips of water from buckets, while others saw her ambling through their yards only to run off as soon as someone approached her.
“If they got too close, she’d run away, and she knew where to go, she was hiding,” said Ms Salazar.
Eventually, a dispatcher from FCSO came up with an idea that they hoped might secure the pet’s safe return.
The sheriff’s office had been running training sessions with the force’s recently purchased drone. The dispatcher hypothesised that they’d be able to survey a tract of land with the device where Farrah had last been seen. Then, with Ms Salazar at their side, they might be able to lure the dog to safety.
“She stuck her head through the barbed wire fence, and then the next minute she’s laying in my lap and I was like, ‘I got her!’” said Ms Salazar.
Farrah is now half the weight she was back in June, and she’ll also need to have one of her legs amputated, Ms Salazar confirmed. The dog is settling back into domesticated life and her family couldn’t be more relieved to have their sliver of brightness back in her home.
“We wouldn’t have got her back. Just because she wasn’t willing to come to anyone,” says Ms Salazar about the efforts carried out by the FCSO. “I guess they’re part of our family.”
