RING’S SEARCH PARTY HELPS REUNITE MORE THAN ONE LOST DOG A DAY – NOW AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE

Ring has expanded its Search Party for Dogs feature—an AI-powered community tool that uses outdoor Ring cameras to help locate lost pets—so that anyone in the U.S. can use it when searching for a missing dog. Since launching, Search Party has helped reunite more than one lost dog each day with their families. For the first time, the feature is now also available to people who don’t own Ring cameras, through the Ring app.

“Before Search Party, the best option was often driving around the neighborhood calling your dog’s name and hoping for the best,” said Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s chief inventor. “Now, pet owners can rally their entire community to help, making it much easier to locate lost pets. That’s why we believe it’s important to make this feature available to anyone who shares a lost dog post on Neighbors.”

Alongside the expansion of Search Party, Ring is also committing $1 million to help provide animal shelters across the U.S. with Ring camera systems. The initiative aims to support the more than 4,000 shelters nationwide in using Search Party for Dogs to reunite lost pets with their families more quickly and help reduce the amount of time dogs spend in shelters.

Ring is already partnering with several non-profit organizations, including Petco Love and Best Friends Animal Society, and is inviting other groups in the animal welfare space to explore collaboration opportunities.

How Search Party for Dogs works

When someone reports a lost dog in the Ring app, nearby participating outdoor Ring cameras automatically begin scanning for possible matches. Using AI-powered computer vision, the cameras look for dogs that resemble the one reported missing and notify the camera owner if a potential match is detected.

The camera owner can then view a photo of the missing dog alongside footage captured by their own camera. If they believe it’s a match, they can choose to share the information with the neighbor searching for their pet—or simply ignore the alert. By allowing camera owners to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to share footage, the feature helps protect users’ privacy while still giving them the opportunity to help reunite a lost dog with its family.

Chris, a Ring camera owner from Lehigh Acres, Florida, recently helped reunite a lost dog with its family using Search Party. He said the alerts made it much easier to assist a neighbor. “If you’re not checking neighborhood posts and don’t know a dog is missing, you’re not going to review your camera footage every time something runs past your house,” Chris explained. “It was really helpful that Search Party notified me and said, ‘Hey, you might have spotted a missing dog.’”

In another case, Search Party helped reunite a lost dog with its family in just 15 minutes. Kylee, a Ring customer from Wichita, Kansas, was quickly reunited with her mixed-breed dog, Nyx, after he slipped through a small hole he had dug under their backyard fence. Thanks to the feature, neighbors were alerted and able to help locate him almost immediately.

“I was blown away. I mean he has a microchip, but not everybody knows to check for that, and sometimes people just assume when they don’t have a collar that they just don’t have a home,” Kylee said.

With Search Party, a neighbor shared a video of Nyx with Kylee, giving her the only lead she had. And thanks to this video, Kylee was able to find Nyx within 15 minutes.

“I don’t think we would have been able to find him if it weren’t for the Ring app.”

Nyx isn’t the only lucky dog Search Party has helped. Since its launch, Search Party has helped bring home more than a dog a day.

Addressing a Common Neighborhood Concern

Lost pets are one of the most frequent topics posted in the Ring Neighbors app. In fact, more than one million lost or found pet reports were shared in the app last year alone. With an estimated 60 million U.S. households owning at least one dog—about 90 million dogs nationwide—the potential impact of Search Party is significant.

“Millions of dogs go missing in the U.S. every year, and it’s a heartbreaking experience for both the pets and their families,” said Jamie Siminoff. “We believed Search Party could make a difference, but the speed and success of these early reunions have exceeded our expectations.”

If your dog goes missing, you can start a Search Party by reporting them as lost in the Ring app. When the feature is active, a banner labeled “Search Party” will appear beneath your dog’s photo. Because Search Parties are temporary, you’ll need to renew it if your dog hasn’t been found after a few hours or start a new one if it expires.

Neighbors with Ring cameras may also receive alerts that say “Your camera may have spotted a missing dog!”—giving them the chance to help reunite a lost pet with its family.

The expansion of Search Party marks another step forward in Ring’s mission to make neighborhoods safer—including for our four-legged family members.