The Best Way to Rescue a Stranded Dog? Attach a Sausage to a Drone, Of Course

Chad Taylor
·2 min read
dog rescued by drone and sausage standing in tall grass
dog rescued by drone and sausage standing in tall grass

SAJ / Adobe Stocke

Millie is a strong, independent female. A Russell terrier and whippet mix, she's small, clever, and very quick, and this week she decided to take herself on an adventure.

The little dog slipped out of her collar while on a walk in Havant, England, and put the whole neighborhood into search mode. Eventually, little Millie was located down on the mudflats, in imminent danger of being engulfed by the encroaching tide, The Guardian reports.

Local bystanders, police officers, firefighters, and even the coast guard tried to pluck the little pupper from the mudflats, but Millie wasn't having any of it, dancing away and keeping herself at a distance.

That was when Chris Taylor, the chair of the Denmead Drone Search and Rescue team, came up with an idea just crazy enough to work: a sausage drone.

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"One of the local residents on the beach where we were flying from supplied us with the sausages—I think they were from Aldi," Taylor told The Guardian. "The woman cooked them up for us and we attached them with string."

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Sure enough, after attaching the sausage to the drone via a string and flying it out over the mudflats, little Millie was intrigued enough to follow the bobbing sausage to higher ground. Still skittish, Millie continued to rebuff attempts to corral her until she was driven even further inland and spotted her mom, Emma Oakes, and her father, Tony. Deciding she'd probably had enough adventure for one day, Millie ran to her people and jumped up into Tony's arms, ready to go home where, presumably, there would be non-flying sausages.

"Millie really likes food and she'll eat anything you give her … raw carrots, cucumber—but she much prefers sausages," Oakes told The Guardian. "Meat is her favorite food, so dangling a sausage was probably the best thing they could lure her with."

You and me both, Millie. You and me both.