A brave Sprocker Spaniel saved her own life by swimming for a quarter of a mile with a collapsed lung, after falling into a giant quarry.
The lucky dog, Ella was walking with owners at Mugdock Country Park, near Milngavie, East Dunbartonshire when the incident happened.
The mischievous pooch went chasing after a deer and wriggled under a fence, where she fell 100ft down the flooded quarry.
Fearing the worst her owners, Francesca and Colin West called mountain rescue and the fire service to try and reach their beloved dog.
Unable to rescue Elle, due to the steepness of the sheer drop down the cliff, firefighters unloaded rescue boat to sail across the quarry to the nearest road.
Ella managed to swim the quarter of a mile from where she landed through filthy stagnant water to a relived owner Colin, who managed to pluck her from the water.
However, it wasn’t until two days later, that vets at Vets Now Pet Emergency Hospital in Glasgow discovered she had a punctured lung from her fall.
Vets at the emergency hospital were astounded that she managed to swim at all, as fluid on her lung could have lead to her drowning.
Tobias Grave, a specialist in emergency and critical care at the Vets Now Hospital in Glasgow, said Ella’s case was one of the most extraordinary he had ever come across.
He said: “When Ella was referred to us she was bright and responsive, but our examinations showed she was suffering from collapsed lungs and bruising of the lungs. We performed what’s called a bilateral thoracentesis to remove air from both the right and left lungs. Thankfully, Ella recovered well from the procedure and we’re delighted to hear she’s now well on the road to recovery.”
Ella has now totally recovered from her ordeal and is full of energy and back to her normal self, but her owners have said they won’t be letting her off the lead in the near future.
Francesca West said: “We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who helped that day: the fire service, the mountain rescue, as well as the volunteers and other dog walkers who helped to look for her.”
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