Dogs are known as man’s best friend. But, when a dog was stranded high on a Colorado mountain, it was a group of men that came to the rescue.
“I guess my initial reaction was just kind of shock that there was a dog there,” Chase Lindell, rescuer, said.
There could not have been a tougher place for Missy the German Shepard to be found.
This photo started circulating on the internet of a dog found abandoned near Mt. Bierstadt, at 13,000 feet. The dog was injured too badly to walk. It turns out the dog had been there for eight days without food or water.
“Just the thought of a dog being left up there, I mean I figured it is worth a chance to try to go find it,” said Alex Gelb, who along with 6 others decided to try to find the dog they only knew from a photo.
They weren’t even sure if the dog was even still alive because it had been eight days as they neared 13,000 feet there she was.
“The dog seemed really weak and it couldn’t move much at all,” said Lindell. “And given the terrain there was no way the dog was walking out of there.”
So, put Missy the dog into a backpack.
The rescue took nine hours and the conditions were anything but good.
“By the time we got close to the summit or on the summit it was a full blown snowstorm,” recalled Lindell.
When they got Missy down off the mountain they took her to a veterinarian, where she is being treated for injuries to her paws and dehydration.
When word of the dog’s rescue got out, her owner Anthony Ortalani came forward. On the website 14ers.com there was a posting of “All I can say is that I am relieved that she is okay.”
He said he was hiking with the dog when her paws became injured, and with the storm approaching he said he tried to carry the dog down the mountain, but couldn’t so he left the dog behind and assumed she died.
Instead Missy survived and now he wants her back.
“Absolutely not, absolutely not,” said Lindell.
The Clear Creek County Sheriff’s department is currently looking into who should keep the dog, an issue that may not be that simple.
“This may be an animal welfare case, more than it is an animal legal case or property case,” Jennifer Edwards Attorney, Founder of the Animal Law Center, said. “This is a case about an animal’s welfare and it may come down to what the best interests of what the dog’s standard would be.”
For those who rescued Missy they said they can’t understand why the dog’s owner didn’t go back up to get her.
“I mean eight days passed, I mean that’s a lot of time it’s kinda hard to get your head around,” said Gelb.
The original photo that sparked the rescue was taken by a hiker who found Missy by couldn’t get her off the mountain by himself.
Fortunately;
A man who left his dog at the summit of Mount Bierstadt will face animal-cruelty charges.
Anthony Joseph Ortolani is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 16, according to a Clear Creek County Sheriff's Office media release.
The charge was filed after the Sheriff's Office completed an investigation into the "abandoned and injured" dog found this month on Mount Bierstadt, a Colorado fourteener.
The dog is named Missy, but rescuers started calling her Lucky. A veterinarian checkup after the rescue showed no permanent injuries, according to the 14ers .com website.
A group of volunteers rescued the dog, a German shepherd, who was spotted wandering at an elevation of about 13,000 feet. She was carried off the mountain Monday.
Ortolani said on the website that he was forced to leave the dog on the mountain when a storm was moving in and the dog couldn't walk because of blisters.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
“This may be an animal welfare case, more than it is an animal legal case or property case,” Jennifer Edwards Attorney, Founder of the Animal Law Center, said. “This is a case about an animal’s welfare and it may come down to what the best interests of what the dog’s standard would be.”
One would certainly hope that's how this gets decided.
I had ten minutres spare and thought I'd look in quickly.
Now I'm sitting here with tears streaming down my face.
Mr Lindell and friends are heroes with huge hearts, and the dog's (hopefully former) owner is a scumbag with no heart at all.
He obviously didn't think it through when he took the dog up in the first place, and then just abandoned the poor thing as soon as it was inconveniently injured - he doesn't deserve to have pets, life partners, children, or friends. He should be punished by having his feet cobbled and then left in the same location for a week. If he was incapable of empathy and compassion for his injured friend, then maybe going through the same experience will begin to open his mind to the possibility that other creatures have feelings. How can he claim to 'own' a dog when he obviously has no understanding of what it means to have one as a pet. He abandoned an animal that gives unconditional love and loyalty - he didn't make one teeny tiny attempt to return even a shred of that love and loyalty - he just left it dumped like used toilet paper.
I'm so relieved that people like Mr Lindell and his friends exist, and that they saw the photo in time.
"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."
--Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher)
Life is like photography. You use the negative to develop.
