The day I had to get Dyno-rod to save my dog
When terrier Olive ran down a hole, little did Robert Mendick realise it would take a rescue team eight hours to get her out
As I watched Olive’s backside disappear down a hole, I wasn’t unduly worried. I should have been. It would take a heartwrenching eight hours to get her back, requiring a rescue operation comprising fire crews, an inspector from the RSPCA – and Jamie from Dyno-rod (more of him later).
I should explain that Olive, aged five, is a small, black Patterdale terrier, a breed once described to me as the SAS of the dog world. She is also my most trusted companion and a family pet, who is adored by the children and loves them back.
Despite being no bigger than a large domestic cat, Olive is hot-wired to seek and destroy all known living creatures, cattle and horses included. Her mother and father were a poacher’s dogs.
And so I blamed it on breeding when, on our regular morning walk on Hackney Marshes, I turned around to realise Olive wasn’t there any more.
As if in slow motion, I watched her vanish down a hole in the bank of the River Lea that flows through east London. It was just before 8am when Olive went Awol. I wouldn’t get her back before dusk, after eight hours of agony and not knowing whether our beloved dog was dead or alive.
When she finally emerged, after a lung-busting dig by the firefighters and Dyno-rod’s Jamie, it was to cheers and tears from a gathering crowd of fellow dog walkers. The Chilean miners never got such a welcome.
When Olive first vanished, I was mildly bemused. She had gone down holes before, but always popped back up within minutes, usually in hot pursuit of a fox. This time, nothing. I sat by the hole and waited. And waited. After about an hour, I started to really worry. I lay down on the ground, and put my ear to the hole. Nothing.
I telephoned my wife. “Olive’s gone missing. Bring a spade,” I said. Then I sent an email to work to explain I’d be late in. I texted a contact to tell him I wouldn’t make our morning coffee. But I was clearly starting to panic because I forgot to press send. I sat down on a log beside the offending hole and googled “Patterdale terrier rescue” and “terriers missing down a hole” and combinations of the above. I read about a fire crew rescuing a lost terrier after three days and gulped at the prospect of camping on Hackney Marshes before calling the London Fire Brigade.
“You need the RSPCA,” explained the operator.
I tried the RSPCA but their phones were down, so I waited for my wife to arrive with the shovel.
The advice online said that digging did more harm than good, risking collapsing tunnels and suffocating or trapping the dog beneath. When my wife heard a bark and I heard what sounded like scrabbling, two hours gone, we picked up the spade… then decided it was too risky.
I kicked the first tree of many in frustration, not knowing the best course of action. When fellow dog walkers Pip and Jacob arrived with their own wayward Patterdale terrier, we hoped Sid might lure Olive out, but no. Pip disappeared and came back with a camping stove and pieces of bacon, which she began frying by the hole. The smell was wonderful. Surely Olive would pop up. But she didn’t.
Finally, I got through to the RSPCA, who promised to send an inspector. As we waited for them to arrive, I had time to find a quiet spot behind a tree and quietly sob out of sight.
Mariam, the RSPCA inspector, arrived at 1.30pm. We had not heard from Olive for two hours, only a worrying, alarming, miserable silence. By now, she had been gone a good five hours.
“We’ll get her back,” promised Mariam, with a reassuring pat on my arm – before promptly calling the fire brigade.
The crew assembled a stick with an infrared camera on the end, a device used to find people in smoke-filled rooms, and poked it down the hole. But it wouldn’t bend around corners and they could see nothing.
One of the firefighters suggested a drains blockage company, so I dialled up Dyno-rod. “We have a lot of experience with this,” said the receptionist, who dispatched Jamie, who had just finished a job nearby in Beckton.
By now, it must have been 3pm and Olive had been missing for seven hours. One of my daughters phoned to ask if there was any news. I burst into tears, apologising for having lost the dog.
Dyno-rod’s Jamie proved to be a saint. He pulled out of his van a huge bit of kit that included a camera on the end of a hose reel. He shoved the camera down one hole and then another. Nothing. No sign of Olive. “We have to dig,” said Jamie, pulling two more shovels out of his van.
“This is now a rescue operation. Clear the area,” declared the fire brigade.
They began digging two trenches, slowly, so as not to collapse tunnels or injure the dog trapped down there. It was slow, hard work and the trenches must have been two feet deep. After a stretch had been dug, Jamie would lower his camera into the tunnels.
After half an hour, Mariam, the RSPCA inspector, came over. “I need you to stay calm,” she said, “but the camera has picked up Olive underground. She’s alive, but it looks like she’s been injured.”
I burst into tears again, so too did Jackie, Olive’s dog walker who had also arrived, and Pip. By 3.50pm, Mariam had crawled into the trench, lay prone on the ground and reached a slender arm into the tightest of tunnels. Out came Olive, caked in mud and blood.
Mariam handed the errant hound to me and I gave her the biggest hug. I can’t quite explain the euphoria I felt but I’m not sure the kids’ births came this close.
On closer inspection, Olive’s lip was flapping down and her face had been battered as if going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. Vets suspect she was attacked by a badger and had lain in the hole, frozen with fear and shock. Part of her lip had been ripped off and teeth puncture marks were visible on her face.
Olive spent about a fortnight on a veterinary ward, racking up a £4,500 bill, paid for largely by insurers More Than. The man from Dyno-rod wouldn’t take a penny for his efforts. The Wanstead Veterinary Hospital did an amazing job keeping her alive, putting a feeding tube in her neck because her mouth was so painful that she stopped eating, losing more than half a kilo in the process.
Olive’s back at home now, with a cone of shame in place. I’m thinking of keeping it on her. It’ll stop her going down holes in the future.
The vet suspects she was attacked by a badger and then lay there, frozen with fear