Dog trapped underground for four days in Brampton rescued

A dog trapped for four days in a badger sett was reunited with its owners after a search involving drones, firefighters, search dogs and volunteers.

Mandy McGrath was walking her Lakeland terrier Sherlock at Brampton’s Ridgeway Woods, near Carlisle, when she lost sight of him as he chased a rabbit.

Suspecting he was stuck underground, she called her husband Mike for help, sparking a long search operation involving a Middlesbrough-based rescuer.

“The hardest thing to deal with was that you’ve got this little thing who’s entirely dependant on you to help them and take care of them. I was unable to do any of that for those four days and it’s absolutely heartbreaking,” said Mr McGrath.

It took countless attempts to locate the terrier before he was freed last week from the inactive badger set, 6ft (1.8m) underground.

Gordon Bottomley from Middlesbrough, a volunteer with the Fell and Moorland Terrier Club, managed to find and safely extricate Sherlock, with help from his own terrier Shrek who is trained to search.

“To see someone’s beloved pet come out and their reaction – the grin was from ear to ear,” said Mr Bottomley, who owns 12 terriers and volunteers for the club which specialised in underground search and rescue of working dogs.

“The terrier is the only dog that will go below ground and seek out vermin and that’s why, over hundreds of years, they’ve been bread for that purpose,” Mr Bottomley explained.

Mr and Mrs McGrath were relieved their pooch, which they have owned for four and a half years, had survived the ordeal.

Friends of the couple were initially drafted in to look for Sherlock, using drones and their own dogs to help look around the area where his tracker last detected him above ground.

It wasn’t until a day later that they managed to get a vet out to confirm the badger sett where they believed he was trapped was inactive – a requirement for firefighters to be able to intervene.

But despite using a thermal imaging camera, the fire service also struggled to detect the terrier.

On the third day of the search, a hole was dug near Sherlock’s last known location after the gamekeepers’ dog, fitted with a special tracker, made another attempt at finding him.

This proved to be a vital move as, although Sherlock was not found there, it provided ventilation to the terrier a few feet away, which rescuers said was likely to have kept him alive.

“Had that not been done, we might have been too late because of the tightness of the hole,” Mr McGrath said.

He said Sherlock likely got his face stuck in the hole while chasing a rabbit and became unable to turn around or backtrack due to the sandy soil.

He added: “Claustrophobia is my worst nightmare, so I wasn’t sleeping well, I know my wife wasn’t sleeping well.”

Their efforts were followed on social media by the couple’s friends around the world, from South Africa to Australia, as well as worried locals who joined the search.

“It’s extraordinary,” Mr McGrath said.

“You suddenly find out just how interested people are in helping, particularly those who’ve got dogs and are familiar with the kind of feelings you might have.”