The Retrievers take to the air to improve their success finding lost dogs

As a volunteer case manager for The Retrievers, Nicole Fredrickson usually is leading searches for lost dogs.

She spent Saturday afternoon, May 4 with her own dog, Marcie, hiding out under a tree in a rural Rice County cemetery waiting for the sound of a faint buzzing and a speck to appear in the sky.

It was part of a weekend of training exercises for volunteers with The Retrievers, a nonprofit network of volunteers who help find lost dogs across the state.

Organization co-founder Devon Thomas Treadwell hosted the training at her home north of Faribault. On Saturday afternoon that training included drones taking off and landing in her cul-de-sac.

The nonprofit is expanding its fleet of drones to help search for missing dogs from the air. Jake Gran, a member of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office Drone Team, volunteered to lead a training for The Retrievers’ volunteer drone operators.

After a morning of instruction, volunteers helped the drone pilots put their skills to the test.

Some volunteers departed with their dogs to pretend to be lost. Others stayed behind to act as the drone spotters, who maintain sight of the drone from the ground. Others stayed to portray distraught dog owners and case managers who liaise between the owner and pilot.

“You could be out there for two hours,” Gran warned before telling the overabundance of dog owners who responded to a social media request for volunteers to hide that some of them could go home.

Fredrickson was among those who headed out with maps supplied by Gran to public property and on the land of neighbors who had agreed to let their property be used for the exercise. Their instructions were simple: make themselves comfortable and wait until practice searchers come to retrieve them.

Treadwell is among the now-trained drone operators. Despite already knowing her neighborhood, it took her about an hour to find Fredrickson and Marcie using a drone that has regular and heat-sensing cameras.

“I think I got something,” Treadwell said at one point, before Gran informed her she had actually flown outside of the boundaries of where she was supposed to be searching.

“I bet it’s Benji,” Treadwell said, realizing it was probably a neighbor’s dog that she had spotted.

Once Treadwell later confidently announced she’d found Marcie, Gran showed how the drone’s map and camera system can drop a pin or create a QR code with the coordinates of the dog.

Gran, who had been watching Treadwell’s screen as she flew, also informed her it was actually the second time she had flown over Marcie and her owner.

Gran said he had spotted them some time ago on the screen but did not tell her. Treadwell was distracted at that time because her spotter on the ground had lost sight of the drone and had asked her to fly back to a more open area.

Other volunteers then admitted they had spotted the big white dog themselves only a few hundred yards away across a field and a street and through some trees. That prompted advice from Gran that drones should be considered an added tool and not a substitute for on-the-ground searches.

The other drone operator trainees included Katie Albright, who came all the way from Bend, Oregon. She is not a part of The Retrievers but is a lost dog searcher in her own state and was invited to join in on the training after acquiring a donation-funded drone, she said.

The Retrievers are admired by herself and other searchers around the country, Albright said.

“These guys are one of the best teams in the nation,” she said.

Treadwell said The Retrievers would happily welcome more drone pilot volunteers who are licensed, have their own drone and don’t also conduct searches for a profit.

There are many other opportunities to get involved that don’t require a drone, Treadwell said, and some of them don’t require you to leave your home. For more information visit theretrievers.org/join-the-team .

The Retrievers co-founder asks everyone to support their work by posting on social media about any dogs they see on the loose. She noted that in-town Faribault area residents do a good job of this. But rural residents seem to assume it’s a free-range farm dog when in fact, she said, it could be a lost dog and their post could be the tip a search team has been waiting for.