Silver Ring lost in Kerikeri Garden While Throwing Dog Toy
Giorgia was visiting family in Kerikeri over the summer break, having come up from Wellington.
While out in the garden, she was throwing toys for the dog when she suddenly thought she saw her silver ring flying through the air.
A quick check of her hand confirmed it—she had lost her ring.
The family quickly sprang into action, searching the lawn, but to no avail.
She contacted me a couple of days later, and before long, I was standing in their garden, recreating the sequence of events with her over the phone.
By this point, Giorgia had returned to Wellington, but talking to her on the phone, she thought the ring might be in the shrubbery to the right of where she had been standing, or possibly as far as 20 meters away in some bushes near the garage.
The dog had only been trained to retrieve toys, not rings…
I covered the likely areas, and because she mentioned seeing the ring airborne, I was able to focus on a fairly tight search quadrant.
As often happens, though, it wasn’t where she thought it would be.
This is when I switched to my ‘unknown location’ search pattern, and sure enough, twenty minutes later, I found the ring tucked into the thatch of the manicured lawn—nearly 90° from the initially indicated direction of travel, and behind a large tree, 15 meters from where she had been standing. It was a spot the family had already searched.
The ring must have bounced off the branches, which deflected it down and behind the tree.
Every search has its unique twists and turns.
