Lassie would be proud! The collies that saved badly hurt master after horror accident
‘I could have been killed’
IT IS a tale that could have been lifted straight from the Lassie series, with a quick-thinking collie saving the life of her beloved master.
Two Scots super dogs have proven themselves as smart – and loyal – as the famed American pooch after the remarkable rescue of their farmer owner.
When George Mair broke his neck in a quad bike accident, his collie Gem ran for two miles to get help – while older dog Roy lay beside the stricken 62-yearold to keep him warm.
He was knocked out when his vehicle overturned and ran over him while he was herding sheep near the foot of Daerhead Hill, near Moffat, Dumfriesshire.
Three-year-old Gem immediately raced off to seek out Mr Mair’s son, Andrew, following the sound of his quad bike as he worked on the family’s 1,600acre farm around the Daer Reservoir.
Yesterday, Mr Mair said: ‘The bike flipped and rolled over me when I was chasing sheep down a steep bit of the hill. I sent the dogs to flush them out and then followed them through a burn and up the other side. When I tried to come back out it must have hit a rut or something.
‘I’ve been riding a bike for many a year and this is the first time something like this has happened.
‘I’m lucky to be alive, I could have been killed.’
Mr Mair suffered two broken bones in his neck and has to wear a support collar for the next three weeks, as well as take painkillers.
Mr Mair had left his house at 5.30am and the accident happened a short while later.
He was lying outside in the cold for five hours waiting to be found and for medical crews to get to him. His only company was his faithful collie Roy, seven.
Mr Mair said: ‘Old Roy never left my side the whole time. It’s great what a collie can do.
‘The sun was shining but there was no warmth to it. I just lay there with him feeling his heat until I heard my youngest son Andrew coming from the distance.
‘I could hear his bike getting louder and louder and he was shouting, “Dad! Dad! Dad!”.
‘I found the strength to lift one of my arms and he yelled, “Thank Christ you are alive”. He had to ride to the top of the hill to get a phone signal then phoned 999.’
An ambulance crew arrived soon after but the rough terrain meant a paramedic had to be driven on another bike by Mr Mair’s eldest son George Junior, 27, accompanied by his wife Hazel, 57. Mr Mair was given morphine and an air ambulance was called to take him to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow.
He said: ‘The paramedics were tremendous. They got me up to the helicopter, which I think had come from Perth, and it only took ten minutes to get me to hospital. If Andrew wasn’t so close I could have been laying there all day. It’s very, very remote round that way, up in the hills in the middle of nowhere.’
Andrew Mair said finding his father in such a frail condition was ‘not something I want to remember’, adding: ‘My heart was racing when I first saw him laid out on the ground. It really wasn’t nice to see him like that.
‘You always expect the worst. You don’t want to think what could have happened.’ He knew something had happened as soon as Gem reached him. He said: ‘You can always tell when something is wrong with a dog and she was acting completely out of the ordinary. I just jumped on my bike and followed her without a second’s thought.’
Both Gem and Roy have been impeccably trained. Mr Mair was the president of the International Sheep Dog Trials in 2015, which were held on his farm.
He said: ‘They’re both working dogs and their training saved my bacon.’
His wife is now caring for him after the ordeal on June 18, with help from his sons and daughter Carol, 25.
But Mr Mair is eager to return to work, saying: ‘My sons both work on the farm but with this injury I’m finished for this year.
‘Once I recover I’ll be back on the farm and out in the fields again – it’s the nature of the job.’