Dog-walk firm hunts for lost pup from air
THE APP-BASED dog-walking service Wag has added a hightech tool to its efforts to collar Buddy.
A Wag spokeswoman said the company — billed as Uber for dogs — hired a drone operator Friday to try and find the Long Island Labrador-beagle mix lost by one of its boarders this week.
“We’ve got drones up. We’ve got people going door to door, handing out flyers,” the spokeswoman told the Daily News.
Buddy’s owners, meanwhile, cut short a family vacation to Disney World on Friday and were flying back to New York to join the search.
“Thank you to everyone who is looking for Buddy, sharing posts and searching. We are on the plane on the way back to find him,” owner Mary Ellen Humphrey said in a Facebook post.
Humphrey told The News on Thursday she wasn’t impressed with Wag’s immediate response when its Massapequa-based boarder first reported Buddy missing Wednesday afternoon.
Humphrey said the company didn’t seem to have people on the ground other than the boarder helping with the physical search in the most critical period after Buddy vanished.
Wag has denied it was caught flat-footed, saying it quickly alerted the appropriate authorities, issued a pet amber alert, offered a $1,000 reward and had the boarder print up flyers that she hung around the area.
“Wag is doing everything it can to reunite Buddy with his family. It is the absolute highest priority for us,” Wag’s cofounder Jason Meltzer said in a statement to The News on Thursday.
Buddy’s case is the second time in two years that a New York boarder or walker hired through Wag has lost a dog. The first time, a Brooklyn Chihuahua named Duckie got hit by a car and died.
Humphrey, 52, of Wantagh, said she didn’t know Duckie’s story when she heard about Wag at her local dog park and called the California-based company to find a boarder.
She said her family adopted Buddy as a puppy from North Shore Animal League in April 2016 and that he is the “best friend” of her 4-year-old son Jack, who is deaf.