The Green Meanies can be softies, as what happened on the 27th demonstrates: they tackled a cliff to rescue a dog.

The Guardia Civil in Huescar received a call from a pet owner to say that his dog had been stuck up a cliff face for the last three days in Cuello Bail in the municipality of Loporzano.

Their mountain-rescue team (EREIM) contacted the owner, who has a GPS tracker on the dog’s collar and was thus able to keep track of the animal. The owner had tried several times over those three days to reach the dog and get it down, but the steepness of the terrain was beyond his ability to scale it without suitable equipment and expertise.

The dog was stranded on a shelf over a 150-metre drop but luckily for the mutt the EREIM team were in the middle of training so rescuing the dog would be good practice for them. Normally, a mountain rescue team is only used to rescue humans; not dogs or other animals.

So, the mountain-rescue team abseiled down to where the dog was, slapped a harness on the surprised mutt and hauled him up to the top of the barranco, where the animal’s owner was waiting.

It was lucky that they needed climbing practice and not shooting practice, wasn’t it?

(News: Huescar, Aragon)