Drone company helps family find dog who went missing during Philly snow storm

A dog who went missing in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood right before the snow storm on Sunday was finally found and brought home early Tuesday morning.

Benji, a one-and-a-half-year-old Bernadoodle, ran out of the front door of his Fishtown home around 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 24 and his owners said that they couldn’t find him.

The couple – Justin Cerone and Ece Bal – said that they drove around the neighborhood for 23 hours straight spreading the word and searching for their newly adopted pup.

“Our mentality was ‘we have to find him,'” Bal explained. “Justin would drive and I would stop. We would look under cars, empty lots, construction sites.”

His family said that they worked with the Philadelphia Police Department, area shelters, their neighbors and local organizations to try and find him but Benji stayed out during the snow storm on Sunday.

Then, in the early morning hours of Tuesday, Jan. 27 a Philadelphia-area drone company helped the family find Benji by using thermal drones.

According to Rick Rotondo Philadelphia and Lost Pet Thermal Drone Search, the effort to find Benji took two drone pilots, two drones and seven flights in total.

Finally on the seventh drone flight, the team found Benji near railroad tracks in an abandoned lot in Fishtown.

“At that point, we still knew that there’s a chance he could get away again and so we did our best to remain calm,” Cerone said.

The company said that Benji was scared when he saw people approaching him so he jumped from an over 10 foot ledge, hit the sidewalk and ran away as fast as he could.

“Luck was really on our side. Every part of this journey just felt like a miracle,” Bal said.

Ultimately a member of his family was able to capture him and Benji was brought home.

His family took him to the veterinarian who cleared him to go home because his vitals all looked good and he didn’t break any bones.

Since coming home, Benji’s mom said that he has slept, ate food and drank water.

Benji’s family says that they plan to get him a GPS tracker and they are going to install a baby gate by the front door so he can’t run out on his own again.

“We’re just going to try to keep things safe and keep things healthy for him,” Bal said.