Lost and hound... dogs lured back to owners by cooking sausages
FOUR days after Liz and Graham Hampson lost their beloved pet dogs Charlie and Theo during a walk in the Lake District, they had come close to giving up hope of ever seeing them again.
But they took one last throw of the dice and set up a stove close to where they thought they might be and started cooking the pair’s favourite treat – pork sausages.
And it paid off. The wafting smell of bangers lured the two miniature schnauzers out of the woods and back to their owners’ open arms.
Liz, 49, and Graham, 53, were distraught when Charlie and his son Theo disappeared on top of Red Pike on Friday June 16.
After appealing for help, more than 120 hikers, friends and locals and two aerial drones joined in searching over the Father’s Day weekend.
By Monday the distraught Hampsons, of Cockermouth, Cumbria, wondered if they would ever see the dogs again.
But when they returned to the fells, the trick with the cooking worked wonders. The smell of the dogs’ favourite treat helped steer the starving, muddy and lost pooches down from the mountainside.
Yesterday delighted Liz explained: “We barbecued some sausages at the side of the stream to attract them.
“We could see the path up to Red Pike and were shouting and shouting. Two and a half hours later, we gave up and decided to go home.
Barbecue
“Then I spotted the dogs at the top of the tree line. I couldn’t speak. I was stood there crying – a gibbering wreck. They absolutely love sausages. They have them every Sunday for breakfast, so if there was one food they were going to come back for, it was sausages.
“One of our friends had the intuition to work out roughly where they would be and we started the barbecue there. It’s like the ending of a film that it worked.
“My son is in the Navy and we rang him first to tell him. A huge cheer went up on his ship. Charlie and Theo are dad and son so we’re now joking they had a Father’s Day weekend.”
The dogs were being walked by the couple’s son, John, when he lost sight of them in mist. He phoned Liz who, within minutes of them disappearing, had launched a campaign, contacting mountain rescue teams, friends and family.
More than 120 people took to the hills over the next four days and even drones were used.
More than 50,000 people in Cumbria were reached through Facebook and Twitter.
There was even a special Twitter “hashtag” for the doggie hunt – #findcharlieandtheo.
Liz, who works for Cumbria Police, said: “I was beside myself when John called. The dogs walk off lead when there is no livestock around and are used to being on the fells.”
The couple camped on the hillside as friends, family and neighbours helped scour the area. She explained: “Charlie and Theo are our family, we were worried sick and not sleeping.”
Dr Mark Steel, a GP and member of Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team, got involved in the search with his miniature schnauzer Jasper, who is Charlie’s brother. After having a hunch the dogs would head down to nearby High Gillerthwaite – at the foot of Red Pike – he passed his location thoughts on to Liz and Graham. And on Monday they headed down to the area.
It was then they cooked the sausages and almost three hours later the plan worked when the two dogs appeared on the horizon. Liz said they were indebted to the helpers and added: “We are so happy and relieved to have found them.”
Charlie and Theo slept for a day and were not in a rush for walkies.