Police use drone to find service dog that ran away from vet appointment

    AMESBURY, Massachusetts (WBZ) -- A service dog bolted from a veterinary office in Amesbury, and it took the police with a high-tech drone to find her.

You will usually find Jenni, a 120-pound Great Dane, by the side of her owner Craig Burton. He battles ataxia, which is a neurological disease that impacts his balance and speech. The animal keeps him from falling down.

"She is my left-hand person because she is on my left side, and we are attached," said Burton. "If I start to list to the right, she will go to the left, and she will compensate for my issues."

The search for missing Great Dane

On Wednesday, Jenni went to the vet, which is something she can't stand. At the door of the vet, she slipped her vest and ran off into an apple orchard.

"I think the whole town of Amesbury, Mass. was looking for her," said Burton.

He got Jenni from the Service Dog Project. They are an organization that trains dogs and gives them to people in need for free.

They contacted the Amesbury Police Department for help and eventually reached their drone pilot Officer Neil Moody. He quickly went to work taking his drone to the air to search an area of woods and swamp.

"It had infrared in the camera, so that even though she was hard to discern from the mud and the woods, and things, they were able to pick up her body temperature," said Burton.

Police say Officer Moody sent a QR code with the animal's exact location, which allowed the Service Dog Project to find her in the woods and reunite her with Burton.

"We were in tears, tears of joy as opposed to tears of worrying the night before," smiles Burton.