River took phone, dog got it home

Man’s best friend helps Facebook track down owner months after device was lost

At 9.46am on February 7, Carl Gerrard dropped his phone in the Clutha River, Wa¯naka — and thought it was gone forever.

But in early April, Rebecca Kinaston and her partner Graham decided to go snorkelling in the river and spotted the phone, inside a plastic bag.

“We like to go snorkelling and look at the trout because the water is so clear,” she said.

They usually only find rubbish and the occasional fishing lure — but the bounty was different that day.

“It was in a plastic bag so we thought it was just another piece of rubbish,” she said.

They took the phone home to Waitati, near Dunedin, and Kinaston hoped she could dry it out and get it working again.

The 35-year-old bioarcheologist kept the phone in her living room, giving it time to dry. And then she dreamed this week that she tried plugging the phone in to charge and it had started working.

So when she woke up, she tried it. Much to her surprise, the phone screen lit up and a photo of a dog appeared on the homescreen.

Amazed the phone was still working, she posted a photo on Facebook of the phone, in the hope of finding its rightful owner.

“We would love to get the phone back to its owner. Does anyone recognise the brindle dog with a blue collar and red tag?”

No one recognised the phone but the dog, it turns out, was a local legend in Wa¯naka.

Thanks to Magnum, a German shorthaired pointer who died three years ago, it took less than an hour for someone to tag Carl Gerrard in the post, letting him know his phone, which he had dropped in the river three months earlier, had been found and was still in working order.

The luck I would need would be multiple millions to one, so I stopped looking. Carl Gerrard said of his phone featuring Magnum, above, that was found by Rebecca Kinaston and Graham, left.

Gerrard said the discovery was “truly amazing”.

“Oh my God. I am speechless,” he wrote.

Gerrard told the Herald on Sunday he was having a quiet Friday evening with his wife, drinking a glass of wine and watching a movie, when he saw the Facebook notification.

“I was just trying to understand why I’d been tagged in a post with a photo of our old dog that we all loved so dearly,” he said.

“We float down the river regularly and have done it at least three or four more times and I have been more vigilant than normal,” he said.

Usually he looks for fishing lures — “they’re about $25 each!” — but, after dropping his device he also kept an eye out for his phone, never really expecting to find it.

“The luck I would need would be multiple millions to one, so I stopped looking.”

The phone was in a cheap dry bag, and was found about 3.5km down the river from where Carl dropped it in February.

It’s no surprise Magnum played a part in reuniting his owner with his lost possession.

Magnum was well-known around Wa¯ naka, often roaming and loved by many, getting frequent pats from the locals.

Sometimes he would even get on the dance floors of bars late at night, or hang out with bouncers.