By DAN KEGLEY
Smyth County News

Published: March 10, 2008

A mixed-breed bird dog spent at least a day and a presumably sleepless night on a narrow, sloping limestone ledge in the cliffs along Interstate 81 between Chilhowie and Seven Mile Ford.
On Thursday afternoon a southbound trucker spotted the dog perched about 40 feet above the trucks and cars and drove to the Chilhowie Fire Department to report it. Minutes later, firefighters and Smyth County animal control officers stood at the base of the high cliffs looking up at a beleaguered dog looking down.
Leaning an extension ladder against the crumbling limestone, firefighters made their way to the first ledge that would bring them to within a shorter ladder’s climb of the dog. Firefighter Brandon Moore climbed the last leg of the ascent, reaching the dog that seemingly had no other way down than in his arms or in a sling. The first matter of business was tying off with a rope secured to a tree above the dog to end reliance on the ladder and on rocky ground that yielded no toe holds.
Fire Chief David Haynes found a long way around that let him walk from the first ledge to a shelf above the dog where he took position to tie Moore’s rope to a tree. After Moore tried a couple of times unsuccessfully to toss his rope upslope to Haynes, the dog moved away from Moore along an even narrower part of his ledge.
Rocks gave way beneath his feet and it seemed the dog might lose his footing. Looking more anxious now, the dog turned back toward Moore, then retreated once again, this time finding the merest passage over which to claw its way up to Haynes’ level.
“After all this, the dog’s going home,” chief animal control officer Bill Turman said.
The dog wandered east along the precipice, with Haynes and Bennett following and Turman tracking their progress from the interstate’s shoulder. The dog paced through the trees heading east, then backtracked, then reversed again when it neared the men following it.
And then word came over radios that the dog had turned south and disappeared over a hill, still loose, but headed away from the interstate and the dangers presented there to dogs by vehicles and to people by dogs that might cause drivers to swerve or stop to catch them.
But before the responders could leave the scene, the dog was back, scampering across the wooded hillside, meandering closer to the highway.
Turman and Bennett were quickly back in the woods in pursuit.
The dog led them to a pond that stands below the interstate, and well out of reach across mud and water, the dog lapped long, sending a flurry of ripples across the pond. The dog drank a quantity that for the officers suggested the end of at least one whole waterless day for a dehydrating dog.
And then he was off again, with Bennett trailing him. Soon both were out of sight, gone beyond vision in trees and a winter afternoon’s shadows.
Bennett was glimpsed next on the ridge as he lay on his side with his knees drawn up, on the downhill side of a rock. Above the rock, the dog looked at Bennett and took small steps toward him, slightly wagging his tail.
Soon the dog was at Bennett, and the officer’s gloved hand reached uphill and stroked the dog. Only after the dog relaxed into the caresses did Bennett look at his quarry, now subdued.
With a chain leash around the dog’s neck, Bennett sat with the him on the shoulder as Turman began the long walk back along the highway to where it all began, to bring the animal control truck with blue lights on top and cages in the back.
The dog quaked with anxiety, glancing with worried looks around, but seemed happy in Bennett’s company as the officer talked about the last minutes of the chase.
“I didn’t make eye contact,” he said. “If you show submission, they’ll show submission. It doesn’t always work.” In the end, making himself small and “baby-talking” drew the dog in, he explained.
There was no collar, no tag, no injuries, and no understanding of how the dog got in that awful place above the interstate, or where he came from. His teeth showed the dog to be perhaps two years old, Bennett said.
As Bennett spoke, the dog quieted and closed his eyes and was near sleep when a tractor-trailer, like countless ones he heard go by from high on that ledge and like the one whose driver reported his predicament, jolted him awake.
Bennett, too, admitted to fatigue after the chase over unsure, unlevel, brushy, forested ground. It was fine with him to just sit and wait until Turman arrived and the two men put the dog in a big plastic transport cage, loaded the cage and dog into the truck and headed for the animal shelter.
The firefighters were taking down the last ladder when Haynes said this was the department‘s first animal rescue.
“We chased a kitten up a tree once,” he said. “A little girl called and said her kitten was in a tree. I told her if we came, we’d just scare it even higher. She said come anyway and we did. And when the ladder hit the tree limb, up it went.”