Key takeaways
- Anyone in the U.S. can now start a Search Party in the Ring app to help find their missing dog, whether they own Ring cameras or not.
- Since its launch, the AI-powered Search Party feature has helped reunite more than one lost dog a day with their owners.
- Ring is committing $1 million to equip animal shelters across the U.S. with Ring camera systems
Ring has expanded Search Party for Dogs, an AI-powered community feature that enables your outdoor Ring cameras to help reunite lost dogs with their families, to anyone in the U.S. who needs help finding their lost pup. Since launch, Search Party has helped bring home more than a dog a day—and now, the feature is available to non-Ring camera owners via the Ring app for the first time.
"Before Search Party, the best you could do was drive up and down the neighborhood, shouting your dog's name in hopes of finding them,” said Jamie Siminoff, Ring's chief inventor. “Now, pet owners can mobilize the whole community—and communities are empowered to help—to find lost pets more effectively than ever before. That’s why we believe it’s so important to make this feature available to anyone who shares a lost dog post in Neighbors.”
In addition to Search Party’s expansion, Ring is committing $1 million to help equip animal shelters across the country with Ring camera systems. The aim is to assist the more than 4,000 U.S. shelters in leveraging Search Party for Dogs to help reunite more lost dogs with their families and achieve the shared goal of reducing the time dogs spend in shelters. Ring is already working with several nonprofit organizations, including Petco Love and Best Friends Animal Society, and encourages others in the space to reach out about collaboration opportunities by emailing searchparty@ring.com.
How Search Party for Dogs works
When a neighbor reports a lost dog in the Ring app, nearby participating outdoor Ring cameras automatically begin looking for potential matches. Using AI-powered computer vision, these cameras look for dogs that resemble the one reported missing, alerting the camera owner if it detects a potential match.
The camera owner can see the photo of the missing dog, alongside relevant footage from their own camera. If the camera owner confirms a match, they can then choose to share the information with the neighbor searching for their pet or ignore the alert. Camera owners choose on a case-by-case basis whether they want to share videos with a pet owner, protecting users’ privacy while also giving them the power to be a neighborhood hero.
Chris, a Ring camera owner from Lehigh Acres, Florida, who recently helped reunite a dog with its family through Search Party, explained how the Search Party alerts helped him assist a neighbor. "If you're not looking at the neighborhood posts and you don't know if a dog is missing, you're not checking your cameras every time something runs past the front," Chris said. "It was very helpful that [Search Party] told me, 'Hey, you might have spotted a missing dog.'"
Search Party helped neighbors reunite a lost dog in 15 minutes
Kylee, a Ring customer from Wichita, Kansas, who was recently reunited with Nyx, her mixed-breed dog, shared how Search Party mobilized her neighbors to quickly find Nyx when he slipped through a tiny hole he’d dug under a backyard fence.
“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, including Xochitl from Houston, Texas; Truffle from Bakersfield, California; Lainey from Surprise, Arizona; Zola from Ellenwood, Georgia; Toby from Las Vegas, Nevada; Blu from Erlanger, Kentucky; Zeus from Chicago, Illinois; and Coco from Stockton, California —just to name a few—with more happy reunions taking place every day.
Lainey, Nyx, and Truffle are among the dogs reunited with their families through Ring's Search Party feature.Addressing a common need in neighborhoods
Lost pets are among the most common posts in the Ring Neighbors app, with more than 1 million reports of lost or found pets made in the app last year alone. And with an estimated 60 million U.S. households owning at least one dog—totaling roughly 90 million dogs nationwide—the scale of impact Search Party can have is enormous.
“Millions of dogs go missing in the U.S. every year, and it’s a terrible ordeal for them and their families,” Siminoff said. “We knew Search Party could help, but the speed and impact of these early reunions have blown us away."
If your dog goes missing, you can start a Search Party by reporting them as missing in the Ring app. When Search Party is active, you’ll see a banner below your dog’s photo labeled “Search Party.” Because Search Parties are temporary, be sure to renew it if your dog hasn’t been found after a few hours—or start a new one if it expires.
As a Ring neighbor, keep an eye out for alerts that say, “Your camera may have spotted a missing dog!” You could be the neighborhood hero who helps bring a dog home.
Search Party’s expansion reflects a meaningful step forward in Ring's mission to make neighborhoods safer—including for all our four-legged family members.
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