She was my weight, around 45 kilos, and she sat down up there, planted all four paws and declined to negotiate.
What followed was a four-and-a-half-hour recovery operation involving six volunteer firefighters, a rescue basket and terrain one of the rescuers later described as "kind of unforgiving".
In parts of the track, four men could not squeeze through, so two had to do it, sliding Sable gently over outcrops and through crevices. A few times they had to plead with her to take a few steps, with one holding her forward and another aft, before loading her into the basket again.
Sable, by all accounts, bore her chauffeured descent with the quiet dignity of a dog who had made her point emphatically and wasn’t for turning. She had reached her limit.
She’s on YouTube, The Boss tells me, getting lots of shares, but nobody's asking the obvious question, which is: what was an old dog doing six kilometres up a mountain in the first place? Sable’s owner clearly had a picture in his head, and it wasn’t about Sable. Needless to say, the picture did not include a rescue basket.
We don’t know the name of Sable’s numbskull owner – he’s probably a nice enough chap – but in exchange for Sable’s decade of loyal companionship, protecting him and being constantly attentive to his moods and feelings, he had not a shred of awareness of how his old dog was managing the climb.
He has presumably kept her fed and disease-free and thought his job was done. This is, in my experience, how these catastrophes begin — not with malice, but with a human attached to an image of themselves doing something that reflects the way they want to be seen. The devoted couple with the golden retriever on the clifftop at sunset.
The Boss says it can be tricky to read a dog’s signals, which I don’t accept for a moment. He says a Labrador will keep eating until it can’t move, but that’s a given. And a kelpie will keep working on a hot day until it collapses. But it’s not that difficult to see a dog panting with its tongue hanging out and take that as a strong indicator.
Let’s face it, I’ve had to talk him out of several crazy escapades while I was teaching him to pay attention.
I see owners of small dogs oblivious to their dog’s effort while they are on their evening run or even riding a bike, often with a leash attached. The poor creature’s legs are a blur.
Other times I see an owner throwing a Frisbee in the park on a hot day, with no water in sight. Most dogs wish to please: it’s not a fault I am guilty of myself, but most dogs do, to the point of exhaustion.
So here's to Sable, and to every dog who has ever sat down in protest of a plan that was never really about them.
Next time the track or the run looks longer or hotter or faster than your dog's devotion to your enjoyment, take its counsel before it gives advice to you the hard way: check the terrain, check the temperature, and ask whether the outing is for the dog ‒ or the version of yourself you want to post about later. Woof!
