By Alan Richardson

A DOG owner who saw one of her beloved pets fall down a 20-foot cliff in Perthshire yesterday has paid tribute to the police search and rescue team which saved it.

Holidaymaker Di Finlayson was walking at the Hermitage, near Dunkeld, with her five dogs when one—10-year-old collie, Maxie—slipped and plunged down the steep embankment into the water below.

She watched in horror as the terrified dog exhausted itself trying to swim upstream before becoming lodged against some rocks on the narrow bank.

Di, from Caithness, said, “I have been coming to Pitlochry on holiday for years and always take the dogs to the Hermitage but this is the first time Maxie’s been there and he maybe wasn’t as careful as he should have been.

“We had just crossed the bridge and I think he slipped on one of the wet logs.”

Di is well-known in Caithness for her collies and routinely “rescues” them. She has four, and a black labrador cross.

Having recently taken in Maxie, she was unaware he could not swim.

She said, “For some reason he was swimming frantically against the current towards the waterfall and just looked really panicked. He was whining and barking and terrified.

“I rounded up the other dogs and luckily there was a lady with a phone and she called the police who, again by lucky co-incidence, had a rescue team doing exercises in the area.

“They were absolutely brilliant and abseiled down the cliff, hooked him up and hoisted him out. He had been in the water about an hour and was petrified.”

A few hours after the 11am rescue, she was walking her pack around Perth’s North Inch and Maxie showed no ill effects.

Di said, “I was there to give him a big cuddle when he came out and I took him to the Tea Room in Birnam for sausages on a roll—it’s amazing how much that perked him up.”

Di is considering making a donation to the Police Benevolent Fund to say thank you to the search and rescue team.

She said, “There was nothing I could have done if they hadn’t come. If it hadn’t been for them I suppose I would still be there, weeping my heart out.”

Colin McDougall of the Tayside Police Search and Rescue team said, “Whilst a great deal of our work is in relation to hill-craft and mountain rescue, we are well-equipped to deal with incidents such as this and were only too happy to assist.”