An 8-year-old retriever named Neesha went missing in early January in the mountains of Willow National Park in Ireland.
The owners took her and another pet – a sheepdog named Harley – for a long walk.
Seeing the deer, both dogs ran away.
Harley somehow managed to find her way back (she was found in the parking lot the next day), and Neesha disappeared without a trace.
The owners checked the forest, launched drones into the air, but the dog was nowhere to be found.
Then they left a basket with unwashed linen at the place where they last saw her – in the hope that Neesha would be able to find it by smell and get out of the park.
The family also spread the word about the retriever on social media.
Time passed, but there was no news about Neesha.
“A week passed, then another, we were looking for her, but we began to lose hope,” said the owner of the dog, Erina O’Shea Goetelen.
The family began to come to terms with the fact that their pet would never return.
Suddenly, the news came: doctors and part-time avid climbers Jean-Francois Bonnet and Ciara Nolan, who climbed one of the peaks of Willow despite the frosty and snowy weather, found a dog on top, curled up between large boulders.
According to her rescuers, Neesha was frightened and trembling all over. They tried to put her on her paws, but she kept falling.
Ciara placed the retriever on her husband’s back, and he carried her down the mountain, walking 10 kilometers down a rocky road.
The man fell several times, slipping on the ice.
To protect the dog, Ciara tied the retriever to his backpack with a scarf.
The couple immediately contacted Ash Animal Rescue, and sent a video of the dog to the operator to confirm the dog’s identity.
The rescue service already knew that the family was looking for Neesha, and could not believe their eyes – the dog spent two weeks on a snowy mountaintop without food and water and survived!
It seemed like a miracle. Neesha had lost a lot of weight and was dehydrated, but otherwise she was fine.
“We were so happy, it was such a relief,” Erina recalls.
“We didn’t know how to thank Neesha’s rescuers for bringing her home. They are amazing people. We are very grateful to them.”
