Incredible moment dog saved from rising tide after rescuers dangle sausage from drone

21 January 2022, 11:40 | Updated: 21 January 2022, 12:35

Lost dog lured to safety by sausage attached to a drone

This is the incredible moment rescuers saved a stranded dog by deploying a drone with a sausage attached to it.

Jack russel-whippet cross Millie was led to safety by Demead Drone Search and Rescue, who attached the tasty meat snack from the drone with a length of string.

Millie went missing on January 13 when she escaped from her lead on a walk in Havant, Hampshire.

After a search lasting several days, she was eventually located on mudflats - but with the tide coming in and no way to access the area, rescuers from Denmead Drone Search And Rescue had to find a way to get her away from the dangerous area.

A post on the organisation's Facebook page read: "We were notified by the owner, but we had already seen lots of social media post about Millie running around in the road.

"We had a few Volunteers head out to see if we could see her, but she had disappeared. We were then notified that Millie was running around on the A27 with motorists, stopping to try and catch her.

|We then had a possible sighting of Millie in the Langstone area. We went down to take a look, and quickly spotted her on the mudflats, heading towards Emsworth.

"We followed Millie from the shoreline about 100 meters away. Until we lost sight of her on the Marshland/Reed beds.

"We contacted the Solent Coastguard, who deployed the Mud Rescue teams. Not being able to see her they stood down for the night as did we.

"The next day in the afternoon we received a call from Hampshire Constabulary, saying she had been spotted on the Marshland, we headed down to the area, Coastguard, Hampshire Iow Fire and Rescue, and Hampshire Constabulary were on scene when we arrived.

"We offered the use of our drones to try and spot her. The Coastguard had a plan, and after setting up, headed out into the mud, Millie ran off, and we deployed our drone on the command of the coastguard team. Sadly after a few hours of trying to locate her we left the area.

"The next day, we sent up the drone to try and locate her, this time we succeeded, and had her looking very calm, on the Marshland. We then discussed the use of a cage, but this was quickly dismissed due to 1 getting a cage 800m across sinking mud, and 2 the risk that could be opposed on Millie if we couldn't reach her before the tide came in.

"So back to the drawing board we went. We sent out the kayaks to see if we could get close enough but we couldn't, Millie by this time had moved further over to the South East Corner of the Marshland, and had gone between two creek's at low tide.

"After employing the expertise of some locals, we were told if Millie wasn't moved with in a few hours she would have been cut off, and the area she was in underwater, with drowning highly likely.

"We had to think fast, one of our fully qualified drone pilots, suggested attaching food to the drone, to try and lure her out of the danger area. After checking CAA regulations, and the MTOW of the drone we had 6 oz to play with, so we attached a 2 oz sausage to the drone.

"We did a risk assessment on the area, and then flew the drone out to her. We didn't think it would work, but it did. We managed to lure Millie 300m over into a safety zone. Luckily she stayed in that area so we had prevented her from possibly drowning.

Millie was eventually reunited with her owner two days later.