“Ghost dog” brought to safety, after 10 freezing days in the woods

Thin and at the end of its strength, but alive. Parts of this story are incredible. A dog that had survived for about ten days in the middle of the woods was brought to safety in the evening, at about 7 p.m., by the men of Varese’s Alpine Rescue, and other people who live in the area. This is Castelveccana, in the mountains, in the part of the village that goes towards the Cuvignone Pass. Here, in the afternoon of Sunday 5 February, a young woman, who had gone into the mountains, noticed the animal, and managed to get close to it. Thanks to the precise position of the spot, which was provided by a GPS device, she was able to give the exact coordinates to the Alpine Rescue, who arrived, on foot, to recover the animal.

It is difficult to say how the dog, of robust physique, similar to a mastiff, survived so long in the middle of the woods, considering the freezing temperatures of the last few days. The animal was found in a deep, practically inaccessible canyon, at an altitude of over 800m.

It cannot be said with any certainty whether this is the same animal that several people had heard howling since last Friday 27 January; no one had seen it, and it had not been possible to identify exactly where to look for it. The Mayor of the village, Luciano Pezza, had immediately called upon the hunters in the area, in order to understand what had to be done to save the animal, but had been unable to reach the precise point. Even the Varese Fire Brigade, who worked in the area for two days, were unable to reach the spot, also because of the extremely heavy snowfall there had been the previous weekend and on the following days. The searches in the woods had stopped in order not to put the lives of the Alpine Rescue personnel at risk, even though residents would occasionally hear wailing from the woods.

And it was because of this that a number of Alpine Rescue units made a sortie in the afternoon of last Thursday, 2 February, but without success; they found no trace of the dog, or of any other wounded animal.

Then, this afternoon, the unexpected: a hiker found the dog, and the rescue was back on the cards. The Alpine Rescue experts managed to reach the exact spot and to bring the animal to safety; it was taken to kennels in Cittiglio.

However, a number of questions remain: whose is the dog, and how did it get to that inaccessible spot in the woods? Did it run away from the valley floor, then climb to 800m altitude and get lost? Or was it abandoned? In the opinions of the rescuers, this is the most likely scenario, that someone brought the animal to the camp in the Cuvignone Pass, and left it to its own destiny. The dog must have gone into the woods, lost its sense of direction and ended up in the canyon, from which it is difficult to climb either up or down, because of the steep sides.

“I have the greatest esteem for the rescuers who brought back the ghost dog from the woods,” is what a vet, who had been there, wrote in an email. “He came trotting along towards us, in the snow; no complaints, a true survivor. It’s a great lesson on life for everyone.”