Three days into a marsh, a drone found Bandit at dawn

Doges Editorial · 2026-06-22 · 5 min read

When Bandit, a 12-year-old Husky, disappeared into a wetland near Lakemoor, Illinois, the search quickly outgrew anything his owner could do alone. Three days later, a drone operator found him by heat signature before sunrise, and thirty people brought him home.

Three in the morning, and Pero Radulovic was back in Lakemoor. He had already searched this marsh for five hours on Sunday, flying slow grid patterns over the cattails and standing water off Bay Oaks Drive, watching his screen for anything that moved. He had found nothing. But then Valorie Revere had received a video, and on the video was the sound of a dog crying somewhere in the reeds. She had driven out and stood at the edge of the marsh and listened, and she had been certain it was Bandit. She had also understood, standing there in the dark, that she had no way to reach him.

So Radulovic came back. He relaunched his drone at 3 a.m. Monday and switched the camera to thermal imaging. In a dark Illinois marsh in mid-June, the water and ambient air sit close to the same temperature; a living body doesn't, and in the pre-dawn stillness a warm body glows.

Three days out

Bandit disappeared on Saturday, June 13. He is twelve years old, a Husky with a white-and-gray coat that fades into marsh grass, and he had wandered from home into the wetlands roughly two miles away. By the time his absence was noticed, he was already deep in the reeds.

His owner Valorie Revere spent the first two days doing everything you do when a dog goes missing: posting on neighborhood groups, driving the roads around the marsh and knocking on doors near the water's edge. The wetland runs behind a residential area off Bay Oaks Drive in Lakemoor, Illinois. It is several hundred feet deep and dense enough that a person on foot cannot easily reach its interior, and Bandit had gone as far in as he could go.

At twelve, Bandit was also at an age when canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome becomes a real factor in how a dog navigates. The condition, a progressive brain disease driven by amyloid-beta plaque deposits with close parallels to human Alzheimer's, affects an estimated 28% of dogs aged 11-12, rising steeply to 68% by ages 15-16 [2]. Its hallmark early signs include disorientation and aimless wandering. A dog who walks into unfamiliar terrain and cannot find his way back may not be choosing to stay; he may no longer be able to navigate home.

When the foot search hit its limits, Revere found Pero Radulovic and Pet Rescue Backwoods Drone Search and Rescue. He has been running this service for four years, adapting search-and-rescue drone techniques borrowed from military and law enforcement practice to the specific work of finding lost animals that have gone silent and can only wait.

That was heart-wrenching.

— Valorie Revere, Bandit's owner, after hearing him in the marsh but being unable to reach him

A heat signature before sunrise

Radulovic's first search on Sunday covered the visible terrain: the shallower sections, the edges and the areas a dog might plausibly enter from land. His second search, launched at 3 a.m. Monday, covered something else: the thermal landscape. Pre-dawn is when thermal contrast peaks: ground temperatures drop overnight toward the water's surface temperature, while a mammal's core holds near 101°F regardless of season. In the stillness before first light, his drone swept the far corners of the marsh, the sections too flooded and overgrown to navigate on foot. Shortly before sunrise, a shape appeared on his thermal screen: a concentrated heat source at the farthest point of the marsh, far from where anyone had looked.

He switched from thermal to the drone's zoom camera and moved in closer.

There was Bandit.

— Pero Radulovic, Pet Rescue Backwoods Drone Search and Rescue, via Lake and McHenry County Scanner

Thirty people in a marsh

The call went out and the response came fast. McHenry Township Fire Protection District Battalion Chief David Harwood coordinated a full rescue. Lakemoor Police Officers Mat Herrick and Trevor Parlberg pulled on fire department water rescue gear and waded in. Firefighters followed with a flat-bottom rescue boat. By the time Bandit was lifted onto the boat and brought back to solid ground, nearly thirty people had become involved: law enforcement, fire crews, drone operators and volunteers. Radulovic's drone stayed in the air throughout, guiding rescuers through the terrain in real time, calling out obstacles before anyone reached them [1].

The successful rescue was the result of exceptional teamwork between the Lakemoor Police Department, MTFPD, and Pet Rescue Backwoods Drone Search and Rescue. Drone technology played a critical role in locating Bandit, directing rescuers, and enhancing responder safety throughout the operation.

— Battalion Chief David Harwood, McHenry Township Fire Protection District

Bandit comes home

Bandit was brought to shore near Harbor Lites, the mobile home park at the marsh's edge, and reunited with Revere before being taken to a veterinarian. He is expected to make a full recovery. Three days in cold, dense marsh water is hard on any dog; on a twelve-year-old, the road back takes time.

For Radulovic, Monday morning was the most technically demanding search of his four years in the field.

This was definitely the most intense so far.

— Pero Radulovic, Pet Rescue Backwoods Drone Search and Rescue

All things considered, it was a happy ending.

— Valorie Revere, Bandit's owner

How thermal drone search finds animals that foot teams cannot reach

Thermal imaging has been standard in human search-and-rescue for decades. Its application to lost animals is more recent and more improvised; programs like Pet Rescue Backwoods are working out, search by search, what the technology can actually do: how close to sweep a marsh before disturbing the animal, how to read a faint heat signature through reeds and two feet of standing water and when to switch from thermal to visual.

Bandit had apparently been silent for most of three days, or quiet enough not to be heard. What registered on Radulovic's screen was temperature alone: one living body in several hundred feet of cold water and dark air. In the pre-dawn quiet of a northern Illinois marsh at 4 a.m. on a Monday, that was enough.

The largest published survey of lost pets, the ASPCA's study by Weiss and colleagues (2012) [3], found that about 93% of lost dogs were eventually recovered, most found close to home through neighborhood searches or by returning on their own, with only about 6% recovered through a shelter. Most searches happen on foot, in daylight and in accessible terrain; for most dogs those conditions are enough. The minority who are not recovered skew heavily toward the hard cases: animals in deep or impassable terrain, dogs who have gone silent and senior dogs who have wandered beyond the range where they can orient home. That unrecovered minority is the gap drone thermal search is built to close. What programs like Pet Rescue Backwoods are learning, case by case, is that the same technology that serves human search-and-rescue can be adapted for the animals that traditional resources cannot reach.

The operational details are still being documented search by search: what sweep altitude works in dense reeds, how ambient temperature shifts affect heat signature visibility and when to transition from thermal to optical camera. The pre-dawn window, when ground and water temperatures are at their lowest and a living body's heat most visible against the background, is the operating condition that programs like Pet Rescue Backwoods are built around.

References

[1] "'Exceptional teamwork': Firefighters, police officers rescue dog several hundred feet into marsh near Lakemoor." Lake and McHenry County Scanner, June 2026. https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/

[2] American Animal Hospital Association. 2023 AAHA Senior Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats. https://www.aaha.org/resources/2023-aaha-senior-care-guidelines-for-dogs-and-cats/

[3] Weiss E, Slater M, Lord L. Frequency of lost dogs and cats in the United States and the methods used to locate them. ASPCA survey, 2012. https://www.aspca.org/about-us/press-releases/how-many-pets-are-lost-how-many-find-their-way-home-aspca-survey-has-answers