‘ My dog saved my life!’
Susie had no idea just what a ‘rescue’ dog her red heeler cross would turn out to be
Staring out into the endless blue ocean and cloudless sky, Susie Pethick lay deathly still on a steep cliff face, her body numb from shock.
Her eyes darted down to her leg, but the horror of bones protruding through her skin was so frightening, all she could do was try not move and stare at the view that had lured her to this stunning part of the world.
She was alone, her husband Michael half a kilometre away, oblivious to his wife’s distress.
“My whole life flashed before my eyes,” Susie recalls. “It was pixilated. Things over the years, my children, little snippets of
their lives, sports they played, holidays we went on and, of course, Michael.”
Susie was just a few days into her idyllic holiday on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula when she told her husband she’d take a 10-minute walk with her beloved red heeler cross Abby.
However, a split-second slip sent her spiralling three metres down a rocky and sandy cliff, stranding her on a remote stretch of coastline with not another person within cooee.
“I was looking out at the scenery and fell, and suddenly there were two loud cracks,” explains the 55-year-old grandmother from Caloote, in SA’S Mid Murray region.
“I couldn’t get up. I tried to pull myself up the cliff a little but it was making the pain worse.”
Falling in and out of consciousness, Susie remembers calling out to Michael for help, but her husband of nearly 20 years was fishing 500m down the coast. “For the first time ever, I didn’t have my phone with me so I kept yelling and yelling,
but the breeze must have taken my voice in the other direction. I had no idea how far away from anyone I was, it was so scary,” she says.
“I looked around and found Abby had stayed with me. I said to her, ‘Go get Daddy,’ over and over but she wouldn’t leave me. She was nudging me gently, hoping I would get up.”
“I guess I passed out soon after because I woke up a while later and Abby wasn’t there anymore, and I was alone wondering how I could get help.” Little did Susie know, Abby had set off on a mercy dash – one that would spark a three-hour emergency operation that ended with Susie being airlifted to an Adelaide hospital. The two-year-old pup, who had only been in the Pethick household for just over a year, ran straight back to Michael’s fishing spot to get help. “After half an hour of not hearing from Sue on her walk, I felt uneasy, so I started searching for her
‘Abby coming into our lives has been a blessing, but it’s even greater now’
with the car,” 59-year-old Michael recalls.
“I then went back to the fishing spot in case she and Abby had come back. That’s when I saw Abby waiting on a sand dune. I called her and said, ‘Take me to Mummy,’ and she just turned around and started walking.
“I would never have been able to spot Sue so far down the cliff if Abby hadn’t led me to the exact spot where she was,” he says, looking proudly at the dog he always knew was intelligent.
As Susie, an aged-care worker, continues to nurse her painful injuries – two broken bones and an ankle dislocation that have left her with a plate and nine screws in her leg – Abby has been her constant companion.
“Abby was a different dog for the next two days while Sue was in hospital,” Michael recalls.
“She didn’t eat for two days. When Sue got home, she instantly went from being miserable to excited, she just wouldn’t leave her alone.”
“She’s very protective of me,” Susie adds. “When I got back from the hospital, I would often doze off and she would nudge me to make sure I was alright. She knows which is my sore leg, so she’ll sit on the other side and be so gentle. She’s just so gorgeous and clever.”
The couple – who rescued Abby from a shelter on Australia Day last year – are profoundly thankful that they adopted their loyal pup.
“She’d had a hard first year of life, being passed around, but somehow she was lovable and obedient from the moment we got her,” Michael says, affectionately patting their hero dog on the back.
“Abby coming into our lives has been a blessing but it’s even greater now. If she hadn’t responded that way, who knows how Sue’s rescue could have turned out.
“She’s cemented her spot in our family forever.”
Susie nods with a smile. “She’s my saviour.”