The day Dyno-Rod saved my family dog

As I watched Olive’s backside disappear down a hole, I wasn’t unduly worried. I should have been. It would take a heart-wrenching eight hours to get her back; requiring a rescue operation comprising two fire crews, the brilliant efforts of Jamie from Dyno-Rod (more of him later) and an inspector from the RSPCA.

I should explain that Olive, aged five, is a small, black Patterdale terrier, a breed once described to me as the SAS of the dog world.

She is also my most trusted companion and a family dog, who is adored by the children and loves them back. But Olive, despite being no bigger than a large domestic cat (in truth, she weighs less than my brother’s fat cat), is also hotwired to seek and destroy all known living creatures, including cattle and horses. Her mother and father were a poacher’s dogs.

And so I blame it on the breeding when on our regular morning walk on Hackney Marshes with Olive faithfully at my side I turned around to realise she wasn’t there any more.

As if in slow motion I watched her vanish just yards from me, down a hole in the bank of the River Lea that flows through east London. It was just before 8am on January 2, when Olive went AWOL. I wouldn’t get her back til 4pm, eight hours of agony and the turmoil; suffering the horrible emotional hell of not knowing whether my dog - our beloved family dog - was dead or alive.

She finally emerged after a lung-busting dig by the firefighters and Dyno-Rod’s Jamie to cheers and tears from a gathering crowd of fellow dog walkers. The Chilean miners never got such a welcome.

When Olive first vanished I was mildly bemused. She had in the past gone down holes on occasion but always popped back up within minutes, usually in hot pursuit of a fox. This time nothing. I sat by the hole and waited. And waited. After about an hour, I started to properly worry. I lay down on the ground, and put my ear to the hole. Nothing.

I telephoned my wife. “Olive’s gone missing. Bring a spade,” I said. Then I sent an email to work to explaining I’d be late in. Next I texted a contact to tell him I wouldn’t make our morning coffee. But I was clearly starting to panic because I forgot to press send.

I sat down on a log besides the offending hole and googled “terriers missing down a hole” and “Patterdale terrier rescue” and combinations of the above. I read about a fire crew rescuing a lost terrier after three days and gulped at the prospect of camping on Hackney Marshes before dialling London Fire Brigade.

“You need the RSPCA,” explained the London Fire Brigade operator. I tried the RSPCA but my luck was out: their phones were down. I sat down on my log, got up again, sat down, got up again and then waited for my wife to arrive with the shovel.

Two hours in and we contemplated the spade. I googled ‘digging out terriers’ and discovered mixed advice. Some said digging did more harm than good, risking collapsing tunnels and suffocating or trapping the dog beneath. We found another hole, close to the one where Olive had gone missing. We knelt at that and listened in. My wife heard a bark and I heard what sounded like scrabbling. Olive, two hours gone, was down there alright. We picked up the spade again, then put it back down, deciding it was too risky.

I kicked the first tree of many in frustration, not knowing the best course of action. Eventually the RSPCA’s phones were back up and I got through to a receptionist.

“Our dog has disappeared down a hole and has been gone for two hours at least,” I explained, “can you rescue her?” I was told an inspector would call me back.

By 11am, I had found Hackney marshes’ park rangers who wandered over to have a look. “She’s stuck. I’d dig if I were you,” said one of the rangers before kindly lending us two more spades. By now fellow dog walkers Pip and Jacob had arrived with their own wayward Patterdale terrier Sid, a rescue dog whose preferred method for getting lost is to jump onto the narrow boats and disappear through the cat flaps in pursuit of cats and cat food. Sid wears a bell so they can find which boats he has got onto. I cursed never getting Olive a bell.

We wondered if Sid might lure Olive out but to no avail. Pip disappeared and came back with a camping stove and pieces of bacon which she began frying up by the hole. The smell was wonderful. Surely Olive would pop up. But she didn’t.

I chased up the RSPCA, having previously found a quiet spot behind a tree to quietly sob out of sight.

By around 1pm, the RSPCA inspector called to say she was on her way and by 1.30pm Mariam had arrived at Hackney Marshes in a van. “Do you have any equipment to detect a terrier underground?” I asked, explaining that we had last heard from Olive more than two hours ago. Since then a worrying, alarming, miserable, tears-inducing silence. She had now been gone a good five hours.

“We’ll get her back,” promised Mariam, with a reassuring pat on my arm. We walked back to the hole from the Hackney Marshes car park and Mariam surveyed the river bank, the holes and noted the lack of a small black dog. “We need the fire brigade,” she said and dialled up her command centre. “They’ll be here in seven minutes,” she said.

I heard the fire brigade before I saw them; the sirens blaring as the large truck pulled into Hackney Marshes. The Blue Watch crew from the local Homerton fire station jumped out and eyed up the river bank. “What we need is the rescue team,” said one and they dialled in Blue Watch from Bethnal Green.

By now the clock was ticking down and it was getting properly chilly. Olive’s dog walker Jackie, a dog whispering genius, arrived on the scene. If anybody could entice out Olive it would be Jackie. But again nothing.

The fire crew assembled a stick with an infrared camera on the end and poked it down the holes, the device used to find people in smoke-filled rooms. But it wouldn’t bend round corners and they could see nothing.

One of the firefighters suggested a drains blockage company and I dialled up Dyno-Rod. “We have a lot of experience with this,” said Dyno-Rod and despatched Jamie who had just finished a job in Beckton.

By now it must have been 3pm and Olive had been absent for seven hours. One of my daughters phoned me to ask if there was any news? I burst into tears, apologising for having lost the dog.

Dyno-Rod’s Jamie proved to be a saint, one who refused payment for his trouble. He pulled out of his van a huge bit of kit that included a camera on the end of a hose reel. He shoved the camera down one hole and then another. Nothing. No sign of Olive.

“We have to dig,” said Jamie, pulling two more shovels out of his van. “This is now a rescue operation. Clear the area,” declared the fire brigade.

Jamie and the fire crews marshalled the dig with men stationed at each hole. They began digging two trenches, slowly so as not to collapse tunnels or injure any dog trapped down there. It was slow, hard work and the trenches must have been two feet deep at least. After a stretch had been dug, Jamie would lower his camera into the tunnels.

After half an hour, Mariam, the RSPCA inspector, came over. “I need you to stay calm,” she said, “But the camera has picked up Olive underground. She’s alive but it looks like she’s been injured.”

I burst into tears, so too did Jackie and Pip. By 3.50pm, Mariam had crawled into the trench, lay prone on the ground and reached a slender arm into the tightest of tunnels. Out came Olive, caked in mud and blood.

Mariam handed the errant hound to me and I gave her the biggest hug. I can’t quite explain the euphoria I felt but I’m not sure the kids’ births have come this close.

On closer inspection Olive’s lip was flapping down and her face had been battered as if going ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Vets suspect she was attacked by a badger and had lay in the hole for hours after the attack, frozen with fear and shock. Part of her lip had been ripped off and teeth puncture marks were visible on her face.

I called my wife and children (she had to leave the rescue for an urgent appointment) and we whisked Olive off to the veterinary hospital.

Olive spent has spent about a fortnight on the veterinary ward, racking up a £4,500 bill paid for largely by the insurers More Than. The Wanstead Veterinary Hospital have done an amazing job keeping her alive, putting a feeding tube in her neck because Olive’s mouth was so painful she stopped eating, losing more than half a kilo in the process.

She’s back at home now with a cone of shame in place. I’m thinking of keeping it on her. It’ll stop her going down holes in the future.