NORTH CANAAN, Conn. (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — A lucky pup who survived falling down a 50-foot cliff at a Connecticut quarry was rescued in a large-scale operation and reunited with his owner on Tuesday after he was heard barking for help.
Lindsay Burr, an officer at North Canaan Animal Control, was first alerted of the situation on Monday evening after she received a call from a gentleman who heard a dog barking as he walked by a quarry on Lower Road.
Burr acted fast and with the company of her sister, Ashley, went to check out the scene. The pair then contacted friends John and Bobby Foley, quarry workers, who were able to drive them into the gated-off area.
Once inside the quarry, the group could hear the dog, but they could not find it.
“Once I got ahold of the gentleman who called it in, he said the dog was … like white sandy color, which is hard because he blends right in with the rocks and everything down there,” Burr told Brigitte Quinn on WCBS 880’s Newsline.
Burr then reached out to First Selectman Brian Ohler, who has a drone with thermal imaging, to fly it around the area. Still, there was no sign of the animal.
“In the end we would believe that he was hiding in maybe a rock crevice to where his heat signature could not be picked up,” Burr said.
The group went home for the night, and Burr received a call in the morning from the owner of a terrier-mix, Rippy, who went missing on Saturday near Lower Road. Burr let her know that if the dog they heard was Rippy, he was alive the night before.
Bobby was having lunch at the quarry on Tuesday when he, again, “heard him barking like crazy” near the same spot.
“They went over to where they heard the barking from and they looked down one of the—they call them benches—looked down the bench and saw that he was on the cliff, which is … right below the crusher,” Burr said.
The safety manager and plant manager of Specialty Minerals, Inc. came out to see if they could remove the dog safely, which they could not. Burr then called in the big guns: the Northwest Rope Rescue Team, North Canaan Fire Company and North Canaan Ambulance.
Two rope rescue team members repelled down about 50 feet, and safely scooped up Rippy.
“He could have been stuck there since Saturday night but no one will know for sure,” Burr wrote in a Facebook post recounting the rescue.
“As soon as we got him on safe ground, I called his mom and she came 20, not even 20, minutes later and picked him up and he was very happy to see her,” Burr said on Newsline. “He’s a very nervous dog, he was actually a rescue”
Despite the ruff experience, Rippy is doing well back with his family.