Every dog (even a St Bernard) has its off day
Famed Alpine breed often associated with offering aid to climbers finds itself in a spot of bother in Lakes
ST BERNARDS are seen as the saviours of ill-fated Alpine climbers, bounding to their aid with a barrel of restorative brandy around their necks.
However, on Scafell Pike in the Lake District, those roles were reversed for a St Bernard in distress, as mountain rescue teams were called to save stranded Daisy, who collapsed while descending England’s highest peak, and showed signs of pain in its rear legs.
Taking advice from local vets, the Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team responded to a Cumbria Police call-out to retrieve Daisy before nightfall and bad weather descended on Scafell.
The 16-strong team found their usual method of rescuing people was wellsuited to the towering 121lb dog, and strapped the placid St Bernard on to a stretcher during the five-hour call-out.
Wasdale rescuers said the dog’s cooperation was “essential” in the descent on Friday, and because Daisy was “so well behaved”, the extraction went smoothly. The team said that there is no harm to the dog but it may be “slightly embarrassed” at having undermined the idea of St Bernards being masterful mountaineers.
They added: “Our members didn’t need to think twice about mobilising and deploying to help retrieve Daisy.”
St Bernards are working dogs from the Alps first used by monks to seek out stranded travellers during the late 17th century.
The Great St Bernard Hospice in Switzerland specifically trained and developed the sturdy breed to cross snow drifts to retrieve those in distress, although the brandy barrel appears to have been a fictional addition to the breed’s image.
In Cumbria, a modern descendant, four-year-old rescue dog Daisy, was unable to move any further after descending from the peak and was kept fed and hydrated by its owners on the slopes of Scafell.
When specialists arrived to bring it down from the mountain it was given painkillers and hoisted on to a “dogfriendly stretcher”, quickly settling in for the journey after being coaxed with treats.
Daisy lay with its chin on the headrest of the stretcher for the trip down, with five or six people at a time needed to move the 8st canine to safety. The rescue from the increasingly foggy peak was finally completed at 10pm, with the dog settling in for a night of rest and recuperation.
A spokesman for the Wasdale team said: “The adorable Daisy, who unfortunately had a hard start in life until she was rescued by her current owners a few months ago, has since been reported to have had a good night’s sleep, snoring a little louder than normal, but back to her usual high spirits this morning.”
Daisy is not the first dog to struggle in the mountainous terrain of the Lake District, and specialists have been called out in the past to take exhausted pets to safety.
In 2019, a nine-year-old dog was said to have “refused to carry on” after a “long wet day”, leaving his owner to try to carry it the rest of the way down from the Cumbria Way near Keswick and Caldbeck.
Keswick Mountain Rescue was scrambled to help when the weight of the dog and the tiredness of the owner became too much.
The weary but happily portable pet was taken down by rescuers, who were relieved to find a terrier after fearing they would have to lift a “Great Dane and rottweiler” down the slope.
‘Our members didn’t need to think twice about mobilising and deploying to help retrieve Daisy’