If you go on community websites and social media this weekend, you’ll likely see dozens, if not hundreds, of lost-and-found pet notices.
The Fourth of July is the biggest day of the year for pets to go missing, with many getting spooked by sparklers and fireworks.
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But in the Pittsburgh region, if the unexpected happens, a group of local volunteers is successfully using a series of high-tech, innovative steps to reunite pets with their families.
Portable, high-tech drones are becoming more common nowadays for wooded search and rescue.
Nobody’s more thankful than Dan and Carol Mancini, as well as Kash, the family’s German shorthair pointer.
On Easter, Kash had a seizure, so Dan let him outside. Kash took off.
“We made the mistake of starting to chase him,” said Dan Mancini.
The Mancinis posted Kash’s picture on Facebook. People reported seeing him all around Moon and Hopewell.
That’s when volunteers Hope Denes and Amelia Breitenbach got involved.
Working together as the Hope and Amelia Rescue Team, or H.A.R.T., they’ve found upwards of 200 missing dogs and cats in about 18 months.
“We are in the woods. We are hiking nonstop and trying to cover every square inch, like where these dogs could have gotten to,” said Hope.
Amelia uses her dog Hodor to track scents on the ground, and from the air, she deploys a drone equipped with thermal imaging. The drone can scan large areas and detect the heat signatures of the animals.
Meanwhile, Hope sets traps that they monitor with about 20 trail cameras.
“They’d get a drone up in that area. We’d start to put traps down in those areas and after eight days of that he finally slowed down, and we finally got him,” explained Dan.
“He was moving like a mile an hour and just tongue hanging out. ‘I’m exhausted. I don’t want to do this anymore,’” Denes said. “That’s what we like to call tapping out. I’m like, he’s done. He’s tapped out. We’re going to get our boy now.”
“Hope calls me a little after 12 and she’s like, ‘Check the cameras.’ Yeah, and there he was,” said Dan Mancini.
Channel 11’s cameras also followed Denes and Breitenbach as they searched the Baden area for another pet, Chloe.
After one month missing and several days of searching, Chloe was reunited with her anxious family.
“We like to tell our families don’t give up on your pet because they’re out there,” said Amanda.
Denes and Breitenbach say the next few days will be the busiest they’ve experienced. For more information on H.A.R.T., you can email the volunteers at HART4pets@gmail.com.
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