Confirmation That Bear Was Alive
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Friday night, a heat signature on our screen gave a worried family something they desperately needed: confirmation that Bear was alive.
Bear is a four-year-old golden retriever belonging to McKinley and Sebastian Sochacki of downtown Plainfield. Someone reached out to pet him, he spooked, and he bolted into Lockport Street. He was hit by a car, kept running, and was hit by a second one. Then he was gone, somewhere in the cover along the river.
His family was searching, waiting, and hoping for any sign of him.
Four hours, no sighting
Kelly Underwood, McKinley's mother, is the one who called us. She was working every contact she had.
We were on the ground in Plainfield at twelve and searched until four in the afternoon. We did not see him once.
That is worth saying, because it is the part nobody puts in a highlight reel. A search is a search. The sun had been on that ground all day, which narrows the gap between a dog and the brush he is lying in, and he was not moving. So we cleared what we could, marked what we had ruled out, and planned to come back when conditions were on our side.
We were back at eight.
Then this
Thermal footage off the controller, flown on a DJI Matrice 4T. No audio.
The left panel is the thermal camera. Cold reads blue and green, warm reads yellow and red. Once the ground has given its heat back to the sky, a living body stands out against it.
The small red shape at the center of the crosshairs is Bear. Alive, roughly twenty-four hours after two cars hit him.
The numbers around the edge, if you want them: 178 feet of altitude, well inside the 400-foot ceiling Part 107 allows. 94.6 feet on the laser rangefinder to what the camera is pointed at. IR 7.0X, zoomed in to be sure of the shape. Groundspeed zero, because the aircraft is stopped and sitting over him.
And Pin Point Success — the aircraft locking a coordinate onto the target. That is the part that matters. Spotting a warm shape is the easy half; turning it into a dot on a map that somebody can walk to in the dark is the half that is worth anything.
Getting him back took more
We did not bring Bear home, and I want to be straight about that. Spotting him was one night's work. The ending belongs to a determined family who never gave up.
What a confirmed sighting does is keep a search alive. A dog hit by two cars and missing for a day is a dog a lot of people quietly start to give up on. Proof that he was still out there, still moving, still worth looking for, is the difference between a search that continues and one that winds down.
Several drone operators worked this one, along with the family, neighbors, and trappers who set up and waited.
After three days missing, Bear was finally recovered on Sunday afternoon. McKinley's father, Eric Underwood, heard barking, found him stranded on a branch in the rising DuPage River, and went in after him. Bear came out with burs, ticks, a fever and infections, went straight to the vet, and is expected to recover.
Patch has the full story, and it is worth reading →
Story and footage shared with the family's permission.
What we are doing with the thermal drone
Some of you saw this aircraft at the Sandwich Fair and asked what we planned to do with it. This is one of those answers.
Premium Ag Services now offers thermal drone searches for missing pets. We are putting our aviation experience and equipment to work helping families look for the animals they love.
We are proud to have played a part in Bear's search and grateful to his family for trusting us. Seeing him back with them is about the best way we could imagine introducing this service.
Lost pet and livestock drone search — how it works, what we need from you, and what it costs →
When to call
The short answer is as soon as you can, and let us work out the timing with you.
Thermal reads the difference in temperature between an animal and what is around it. Night and the hour before sunrise usually give the widest gap, which is why a lot of this work happens after dark. But daylight searches find animals too — shade, cloud cover, cool weather, timber and creek bottoms all hold that gap open, and a moving animal is easier to pick up than a still one at any hour. Flying in daylight also rules terrain out, which matters more than people think.
What thermal genuinely will not do: see through a roof, a wall, a culvert or a dense canopy — it reads heat that reaches the camera. And it does not identify. A warm shape in the brush is a warm shape; deer, coyote, raccoon and the dog you want all glow the same. That is what the zoom is for, and it is why having somebody on the ground who knows the animal helps.
If your animal is missing
Four things that cost nothing and matter more than people expect.
Do not chase. A frightened dog runs from everyone, including the people it loves. Bear ran from someone trying to be kind to him.
Go quiet. Large groups calling a name usually push a scared animal further out.
Put something of home at the last place you saw it — food, water, and a worn piece of your clothing or its own bedding.
Tell people. Animal control, the shelters, the police non-emergency line, and whichever local Facebook group people actually read. Most animals are found by a neighbor.
Welcome back, Bear.
Premium Ag Services is a veteran-owned business in Newark, Illinois. We fly thermal across Will, Kendall, LaSalle, DeKalb, Grundy and Kane counties. We are also an authorized dealer for the DJI Matrice 4T — the aircraft that flew this search.