My tribute to Skye – my mountain dog

Many of you will know my dog, Skye. Yesterday she passed away. I'm pretty upset. I'm writing this for two main reasons. The first is a practical one. It is a way of letting people know that my dog has passed away. The second is purely self indulgent - a tribute to my dog that [...]

The post My tribute to Skye – my mountain dog appeared first on Expedition Guide.

Many of you will know my dog, Skye. Yesterday she passed away.

I’m pretty upset. I’m writing this for two main reasons. The first is a practical one. It is a way of letting people know that my dog has passed away. The second is purely self indulgent – a tribute to my dog that I can look back on. But I guess it’s also a tribute to all dogs everywhere and the relationship we get to share.

We moved to North Wales in 2008. I had two big lifetime ambitions; to be instructing and guiding full time through my own business and to join a Mountain Rescue Team and the move from Worcestershire facilitated both. Having joined Llanberis MRT the month that we moved I learnt about the Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA) and immediately signed up. I joined as a dogs body, hiding for the dogs and their handlers and being shown the ropes by the likes of Gareth Wyn Williams, Helen Howe, Phil Benbow, Roly Layland and Rich Beech. It was clear that there were two main types of Search Dog, Collies and Labs. (Roly would tell you there were three types of search dog; the air scenting dog, the trailing dog and the f***ing dog that isn’t on a lead) I had no experience with either breed but plumped for the Collie on the basis that they are more agile and this would suit my scrambling work better.

My gran had died recently and left me a small amount of money, I spent my inheritance on a 6 week old puppy from a breeder on the Welsh/English border and brought her home in March 2009. (In hindsight this was too young, if I had left her with the breeder for another couple of weeks she would have probably benefited from the extra socialising with her litter mates)

As kids we hadn’t had dogs and when I left home in 1998 the first thing I did was go out and buy a puppy. There was very little planning or thought, I just knew I wanted a dog. I bought a small Jack Russell and called her Sally, named after the horse in the series of books written by Malcolm Saville. (Much like the Famous Five but with group of kids on the Long Mynd in Shropshire – Sally was Peters horse for those that have read them!) Whilst still living in Worcestershire I also had a Springer Spaniel but he only lived to the age of five after developing massive tumours on his chest. Skye, therefore, was my third dog and of course we still had Sally. (She lived to the age of 19 and I only lost her in 2017 – we joked that she lived that long just to annoy us but she was also a lovely dog)

Skye fitted into our family life and later that summer Charlie (my youngest son) was born. Life was pretty manic. I was building up Expeditionguide for us to make our full time living from it, Kate had her hands full with 4 kids, two dogs, three cats and of course I kept disappearing on rescues.

The first twelve months of Skyes training were dedicated to obedience and stock training. Before she was allowed to join up with SARDA she would need to pass tests in both. The more intimidating of the two was the stock test. She would need to ignore sheep and hold a lying down stay whilst the sheep where driven past her. I had bought her from a working farm and both of her parents were champion sheep dogs. In retrospect this probably wasn’t the brightest move and I am sure she would have made an excellent sheep dog – she had the classic Collie eye where she would lower her front legs slightly and look up at anything that resembled a sheep – ready to round it up. I was concerned for a while that this might bring an end to her career as a Search Dog before it even started. I received lots of help from the likes of Rich, Gareth, Helen, Sally and Roly as well as many of the other SARDA handlers and supporters. I remember one evening over at Tremadog when Jeremy Trumper allowed me to run her with his sheep while I worked the whistle and rewarded her with her toy – he was impressed by her attentiveness to me. That was a quality that remained with her always – her eyes never left me when we were together.

I was very conscious of not over working her. I didn’t take her on a mountain summit until she had finished growing and so she was over 12 months old before we started ticking off some mountain days together. At first I showed her the ropes. I taught her the easiest lines I knew on the classic scrambles of Snowdonia. As she developed in confidence and skill she began to show me easier lines that she had figured out for herself. There are several routes I use today because she showed them to me. She was especially good in the winter as she seemed to be able to use her nose to pick out the route in a white out. I learned I could trust her and she learned she could trust me.

Her daily life was pretty good. She got a morning and evening walk in the hills above home and she came to work with me on any of the days that didn’t involve ropes. She ticked off most of the grade 1 scrambles in Snowdonia, quite a few of the grade 2 routes and even the Cneifion Arete on one occasion. We had soloed up the Idwal Buttress together, I had no kit and was wearing jeans and carrying just her lead. We headed upto the Arete where normally she would go right and scramble up the grass to the side and wait for me at the top of the route. On this occasion I completed the steep section at the start to find her waiting for me on the belay. She must have found a line in but I have never worked out how she did it. I then had to carry her up most of the rest of the route and had visions of being spotted and subjected to merciless piss taking as we struggled ill equipped up the route – we got away with it though and no one need ever know.

She passed her stock and obedience test sometime in 2010 and became a trainee search dog. She went on to qualify as a lowland search dog a year or so later and then a Mountain Search Dog after that. The training was without doubt the best bit. It was all one massive game for the dog and of course it gave her a job to do. We would train together every day, getting the kids to help whenever I could persuade them. Additionally we would train with SARDA Wales every Tuesday evening and one full weekend a month – learning from the more experienced handlers and dogs and massively supported by the volunteers who gave up their free time to hide for the dogs.

One of our most memorable training sessions was a week in Glencoe that I organised to provide winter skills to the handlers, culminating in a search exercise on Buachaille Etive Beag. I arranged for a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter to pick us up from the lawn of the Kings House Hotel where we were staying. (They did a special deal for SARDA in those days) The aircraft collected the dogs bodies first and landed them close to the summit where they then dispersed to pre-arranged hiding places – hunkered down in bivvy bags that were then hidden under the snow. The Sea king then returned for us handlers with our dogs and as we approached the door I noticed a cold front coming down the valley and bringing a snow storm with it. I was pretty sure we would be told to wait out the weather but an enthusiastic winch operator assured me that they had flown in much worse. We jumped in and the aircraft took off. As we flew through the snow the pilot seemed to be struggling with visibility and over the intercom I learned that the windscreen wipers were playing up. A solution was found by removing the side window and the pilot (or co-pilot – I can’t remember which side it was on) sticking his head out to have a fiddle as we made our way down the Coe. Having hand railed the A82 we banked left to fly between Buachaille Etive Mor and Buachaille Etive Beag. By this stage we were in a hover taxi as visibility was severely reduced. The winchie was hanging out of the back door whilst the pilot was hanging out of the front window in an attempt for them to see the terrain that we all knew must be near by. Listening in I could tell the crew were enjoying the challenge – the Royal Navy seemed to take a different approach to the RAF who we normally flew with. I kept stroking my dogs head, for my benefit rather than hers as we slowly crawled up higher in search of the col where we could be dropped off. I then went very pale. I was the only handler with an intercom system on and so the others were blissfully unaware of the reason we were now descending at some speed. I could hear the crew calmly reporting the engine failure and words like abort and emergency landing made me grip my dog even tighter. I think we did three complete 360’s before a safe landing at the bottom of the valley. The crew apologised that we would have to get out early but I wasn’t sad to be getting my feet back on the ground! We completed the search exercise and the dogs found the bodies before we hitched back to the Kings House.

We shared many searches together, some of them going on for several days including the April Jones search in Machynlleth. At the time of the little girls disappearance I was climbing in the Alps. Alec and I had just climbed the Petit MacIntryre on the North Face of the Grande Jorasses, probably the hardest route I had ever climbed and I was feeling chuffed. I read about the search efforts on our way home and headed straight out with Skye as soon as I got back. I remember clearly how suddenly climbing seemed so insignificant. An achievement that had seemed so important to me a few days before now felt pretty meaningless.  April Jones was never found (Mark Bridger was later convicted of her murder) but many search dogs and volunteers spent many days and nights searching the area in which she went missing.

On another occasion Skye and I took Archie up Snowdon. At that age he was 10 and we decided to go along Crib Goch (Skye showed us the best route of course). I used a rope for most of the ridge to look after my son whilst Skye scampered around us. We met Steve the village postie on the summit who was suitably impressed with Archies achievement and bought him a drink in the summit cafe. (I had forgotten my wallet – same old story!) Later that week Skye and I were back up on the Snowdon horseshoe. After an evening training session at PYP we had been approached by someone who’s loved one hadn’t returned from the mountain. A full call out was instigated and Skye and I spent the night searching Crib Goch, Snowdon and Lliwedd in some foul weather with no visibility. It seemed incongruous that we were on the same mountain that we had all enjoyed so much together just a few days before in such contrasting circumstances. To Skye of course it was just another excuse to play the game and who cares about the weather! (The missing person was found at dawn by the aircraft – they had been fatally injured descending the East Ridge from the summit of Snowdon and were at the top of the Trinity Face. Again the wind direction meant we were out of luck for a find.

The nature of searching changed a great deal just in the time that I was involved in SARDA and I am just a small blip in an organisation established by Hamish MacInnes in 1965. Mobile phones meant that people who were conscious and in need of help could call and so we were often looking for those that couldn’t get in touch. On our first search together we narrowly missed finding a dementia patient who had walked out of his nursing home in the middle of the night. A Search Dog uses the wind to search the area they are given and on this occasion the missing man was later found (alive and well) 1 metre outside of our search boundary on the other side of a fence. Had the wind been in a different direction or if Skye had been with a more experienced handler she might have had a find on her first outing. In truth though she was much better at the work than I was. She loved the game. For her it was all about the toy at the end and as a Collie she enjoyed having a job to do. We never found a live missing person other than the countless dogsbodies we found every month in training. We spent a lot of time searching and clearing areas that allowed search managers to pinpoint their resources and were second on scene on several occasions. Skye didn’t mind – she just enjoyed the game. She enjoyed some celebrity status too, appearing in The One Show, two series of The Mountain on ITV, in various magazines and blogs. It wasn’t unusual for people to approach me because they recognised the dog.

After about 6 years on the call out list I picked up a knee injury (an over use injury so not directly related to SAR). It took me several years to make a full recovery and in that time I decided to retire my dog. I still took her out to “play the game” with my kids or a hidden rucksack and she never forgot her training. I want to thank everyone at SARDA Wales who gave us that time together. I look back on it with happy memories and the process was incredibly rewarding for me and my dog.

Throughout her life we shared many adventures together. She was a brilliant family pet and incredibly friendly to everyone she ever met. Kate and I were laughing last night about some of the good memories – Skye squeezed into the train amongst our luggage on our way to Centre Parcs the time we tried to use public transport to get to Nottingham with 4 kids and a dog. Skye sitting patiently on belays as I climbed. Skye entertaining guests at a family wedding by demonstrating her searching skills on the lawn of a Country House. On one occasion Huw and I were running a scrambling course and took a group of clients each up onto Tryfan. We stopped near each other for lunch when I heard Huw good naturedly shouting that the “bloody dog had stolen his sandwiches”. We all giggled and then the next day went up onto Crib Goch. Huw and his team were moving quicker than us so we didn’t see him all day but I was delighted to learn later that Skye had still found them at lunchtime and once again relived him of his lunch.

I was able to trust her completely off the lead, she would find me if I was out of sight, she always responded first time to my whistle and her stock training with SARDA stayed with her – she always walked next to me near sheep. She was partial to a bit of sandwich at lunchtime and she would guard the house against other dogs – but not people!

Over the last couple of years she slowed down a fraction but not a lot. I noticed she would be a bit stiffer in the evenings and I had to wait for her if we were ski touring in deeper snow. She enjoyed the pandemic because were were all at home and she got more walks with all of the family than ever before. I took her to less places, even when we were allowed to travel I was aware that she would never get social distancing and so for a period we stayed close to home. This spring though she was back out at work with me and enjoying client days once more – meeting new people and showing them the best lines. Maybe stealing the odd sandwich. She didn’t really seem to age – she maintained an enthusiasm for life that will always be inspiring.

She passed away yesterday. Up until the weekend she was her normal happy self which I think makes it all the more of a shock that she is gone. She went to the vets on Saturday as she was off her food and panting. It tuned out to be a problem with her gallbladder and she had surgery on Sunday night. The surgery wasn’t successful and I was with her when they put her to sleep.

I miss her massively. She was incredibly clever, kind, patient and loyal. She was our family pet, she was a Search Dog, she was my roughdy, toughdy mountain dog who couldn’t have been more soft. I have been vey lucky to share twelve and a half years with her. I’m grateful that she had such a good quality of life all the way to the end. Skye – the greatest dog I have ever known.

 

 

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