SHEEPDOG RESCUED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31360, 4 May 1967, Page 1

SHEEPDOG RESCUED

Tosh, the three-year-old huntaway sheepdog trapped 300 ft down a precipitous bluff on the Castle Hill station at Porter’s Pass, was rescued last evening by the runholder, Mr J. R. Waites, and two shepherds. The dog had been trapped in a niche for 30 hours. He was very hungry, but otherwise little the worse for wear.

The dog became trapped after getting sheep off a nearby hill and then trying to return straight to his owner, a Grasmere station shepherd, Mr R. Knight, who was helping

with the Castle Hill muster. Tosh, following a narrow ledge across the rotten rock face of the bluff, tumbled down a greasy rock into the niche at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Six hundred feet of nylon and hemp ropes was obtained from the ski hut on Mount Cheeseman and taken to the scene, about three miles from the Castle Hill homestead at 3 p.m. yesterday. The head shepherd on the station, Mr G. Nelson, lowered himself down the bluff. Two ropes, each 300 ft long, were anchored

to a tree at the top of the bluff. Mr Waites and Mr Knight paid out the ropes as Mr Nelson went down. Mr Nelson tied one of the ropes to the dog’s collar. He then half-carried, half-pushed Tosh up the bluff as the two men at the top pulled in the ropes.

The rescue, in cold, stormy weather, took three hours. “I don’t know who was the more pleased to see each other again—Dick Knight or Tosh,” Mr Nelson said. “We had to get the dog out We don’t know too much about climbing, but we did it”