Feature - Drone to Home

Drone To Home ' s managing director Rebecca Bodkin , and founder and CEO Phil James , with tracker dog Travis . © 2024 Drone To Home .

Holly Crawford reports on how Drone To Home , a charity that reunites lost animals with their owners , is working with the veterinary profession to promote best practice when searching for missing pets .

Originally consisting of one man and his drone tirelessly scouring areas where missing animals were last seen , Drone To Home is now a registered charity with three full-time employees and a raft of volunteers offering advice to pet owners across the UK . An army of drone operators are also being trained , to extend the charity ' s thermal drone search capability across the country . The final team member is Travis , a trained tracker dog , who has rescued nine dogs in 2023 alone .

The concept behind Drone to Home began when a dog went missing for 3 days near the home of Phil James , the founder and CEO of the charity . At the time , Phil was using a drone to conduct roof investigations and was asked to help with the search . Using a thermal drone , Phil helped to locate the dog quickly . Word of this success soon spread among the local dog-owning community , who began to call on his airborne assistance . Phil spent increasing amounts of his free time searching for animals , and funded the enterprise himself for 3 years , before registering Drone To Home as a charity in 2022 .

Phil says there is more to the charity than reuniting humans with their hounds ; the team also educates owners on how to retrieve their dogs swiftly and safely .

24 Veterinary Nursing Journal