Thermal drone locates Charlie, a dog from Crystal Lake who was missing for a week

After going missing for nearly a week, Charlie, a 2-year-old Bernese mountain dog from Crystal Lake, has been reunited with his family and is recovering.

Charlie has become a McHenry County pet celebrity not only because neighbors and the community helped search for the missing pup, but because how he was found.

[ See more photos of the rescue of Charlie the dog ]

On Sunday – seven days after he went missing – Mike Smith of SmithicAir and Kat Cavanaugh of Dog Gone Pet Recovery found Charlie in a wooded area off of Huntley Road at Waterford Court, not far from his home and off a walking path there. To do it they searched from the air using a thermal, heat-sensing drone.

Using thermal imaging drone searches for missing pets “isn’t a miracle cure,” said Smith, of Bartlett. “It is really hard to search a neighborhood with all of the heat sources” that can throw up a false signal.

Charlie had a few things going for him, said his pet parent, Kate Belmonte. Bernese mountains dogs are an extra-large breed who like the cold and would likely throw off a large thermal signature. Charlie weighs in at over 80 pounds.

“His size helped my search,” Smith said. “I am looking for heat versus the environment. It was cold out, the ground was cold, the sun was not out. That made his thermal image large and easy to see.”

Charlie was in surgery on Monday afternoon. His rescuers believe Charlie was struck by a car sometime after he ran off. He had a broken femur when found but is expected to have a full recovery.

His story started early on Dec. 30, when Belmonte let two of her three dogs out, not thinking about Charlie’s collar being off after a bath the night before. She called the dogs back in and Charlie did not come with. Because she’d taken his collar off for the bath, that meant he didn’t have his Invisible Fence tag on, either.

“He chases deer and squirrels ... but the next morning I didn’t even think about putting the collar back on,” Belmonte said.

She posted on Crystal Lake Facebook groups, asking people to keep an eye out for him, and reached out to Lost Dogs Illinois. That nonprofit group helps pet owners navigate finding lost dogs.

What Belmonte also got were messages and calls from scammers. Those scammers are the reason he doesn’t usually reach out to the owners of missing pets and wait for them to contact him, Smith said.

“There are a ton of scammers. You will hear how many people contacted them, saying I have your dog,” Smith said. Those scammers will offer to bring back the dog they don’t actually have in exchange for a gift card or cash and then disappear, he said.

“They will even get drone operator calls, like ‘Hey, we will come out, we have a 97% success rate with a thermal drone,’ and they want the money up front,” Smith said, adding those are also scams as it’s impossible to find the animal each time.

He has been searching for lost animals – dogs, cats, cattle and a pet fox once – with a thermal drone since purchasing one as a Christmas present to himself in 2022. He’s been called to search about 40 times since then, but doesn’t comment on how many times he’s been successful.

“It is more successful when I go out after a recent sighting,” he said.

Belmonte started the drone search with Kat Cavanaugh of Dog Gone Pet Recovery in Lake Villa. With no recent sightings of Charlie to go off of, Cavanaugh searched open land near their home on Thursday and Friday after work, and for several hours on Saturday. She suggested they call Smith, partially because he’d found a missing dog in Woodstock on Friday. Both she and Smith then went out on Sunday. They “tag-teamed” the search.

“I flew mine while Mike was changing out batteries,” Cavanaugh said.

After his first battery change, about 50 minutes after they started looking, Smith spotted Charlie laying in high grass off the walking path.

What they didn’t do next was immediately run to the spot where Charlie was. Because of his broken leg he was in “flight mode,” Cavanaugh said.

Belmonte and her fiancé walked to a spot near the path.

“He limped over to us. It took 45 minutes to get him out of the tall grasses. He wasn’t trusting us, he was all disoriented,” she said.

That is normal, Smith said. Good-hearted people want to help search for missing pets, but approaching or calling for a scared, skittish or injured dog can result in the animal withdrawing further, or run, and might be hurt worse, Smith said.

Both he and Cavanaugh have FAA drone operator certifications and both charge for their services. Calling a drone operator early after a dog has gone missing, or after a confirmed sighting with a specific location to search, can have better results, Smith said. Neither is it a sure thing.

“The problem with all of the great media attention and the good hearts is, I don’t want to give people false hope and have them pay for the services when it is not the right tool,” Smith said.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help pay for his surgery and recovery, Charlie’s Home Lets Ease the Burden.