Camas-Washougal firefighters rescue dog trapped in canyon

The dog was taken to the West Columbia Gorge Humane Society, where staffers will try to find the dog’s owner. April Nicholas, dog shelter manager, said the Humane Society keeps found dogs for five days while actively looking for an owner. If one isn’t found in five days, the society’s veterinarian will check the dog, and if it is healthy, it’s put up for adoption.

Tricky rescue

The rescue was a tricky one for the department, only partly because the officers were attempting to rescue a dog instead of a person.

The department would’ve had more help to rescue a human, said Larry Larimer, battalion chief. For those rescues, the department would have two engines and at least nine people on the scene.

On Thursday, there was one engine and five officers from the department: Larimer, Capt. Michael Brown, Victor Compher, Tierney and Dane Hammond, the second officer who went down to rescue the dog. Camas-Washougal Animal Control Officer Rick Foster was also on hand and helped with the rescue.

The location added difficulty to the rescue. The canyon is an area for drainage, with a series of 90-degree drops and shelves, Tierney said. At the bottom is a creek. The dog was on a shelf about 10 feet up from the creek bottom, and roughly 60 feet from the top of the street.

The department’s rescue calls around Camas and Washougal are typically in less steep areas, Larimer said. Since the canyon had drops nearly straight down to each shelf, it was steeper than an area like the Potholes south of Round Lake in Camas.

“We have better access to choose a route to get down to rescue someone because there is usually a more gentle slope,” Larimer said.

Harness and a Pop-Tart

Once Tierney and Hammond reached the dog, she looked scared and was growling quite a bit.

“She didn’t calm down until I pulled out my red webbing, which I used to tie the harness,” Tierney said. “When I pulled that out, she popped her head up and was looking at it. Maybe she had a red leash at some point. I said, ‘Want to go for a walk?’ and she started wagging her tail.”

She was also a bit bite-y, and showed her teeth several times during the rescue, Tierney said. The two gave her a Pop-Tart to try and calm her down. While she ate it, the treat didn’t do much calming.

Originally, the two thought they could tie a harness around the dog and lower her to the creek bottom since that would’ve been easier, but the dog was too afraid to go over the edge by herself. Instead, the two men had to attach themselves and the dog in a harness with a rope attached to the fire engine.

The weight of the men, dog and equipment was too much to pull up on its own, so the officers had to set up a three-to-one pulley system, which allowed them to pull everyone up.

Fireworks casualty

Larimer thought the dog ended up down the slope sometime on the Fourth of July, possibly due to a fear of fireworks.

Debbie Ausherman, who lives in a house looking out over the canyon, said she first heard the dog bark early Wednesday morning.

“I can’t really see anything over there because of all the trees, so I thought it was a dog at a house somewhere down there,” she said.

A neighbor called Wednesday morning, though Ausherman isn’t sure who. She has lived in her house for 17 years and doesn’t remember any animals or people falling into the canyon.

Larimer and Tierney said the last animal rescue they assisted on was about eight years ago, when they helped free a deer from a fence.

“I’ve been a firefighter for 40-plus years,” Larimer said. “We used to put a ladder up to a tree to rescue a cat, but we don’t really do that anymore. We’re just so much busier now that we can’t use resources for this type of thing. Since I thought this was a Fourth of July event and we came to check it out, it made sense to do something.”