Volunteers Find 2 Lost Dogs in Miracle Mountain Rescues

When Mabel the dachshund slipped her collar and bolted onto the M4 motorway during a house move, her owners feared the worst. But a network of volunteers with thermal drones turned a terrifying loss into a heartwarming reunion just 36 hours later.

Lucy Rogers and Jordan Goff stopped at Leigh Delamare services on Friday for a quick break before the final leg of their move from Suffolk to Somerset. Their two-year-old dachshund panicked, escaped, and ran straight toward incoming traffic on one of Britain's busiest motorways.

"I pretty much blacked out. I was just screaming," Rogers recalled. Her partner chased Mabel along the hard shoulder while passing drivers pulled over to help, but the terrified dog vanished into the countryside.

The couple immediately contacted DroneSAR for Lost Dogs, a volunteer charity that uses thermal imaging technology to find missing pets. Teams worked through the night scanning fields near the motorway with heat-sensing drones.

By Saturday morning, Mabel appeared near a stable yard in Kington St Michael, north of Chippenham. Volunteers guided Rogers by phone across a waterlogged field to reach her dog, who had sheltered in a hedgerow overnight.

"I got down to the floor and started saying Mabel's favorite words like 'would you like some breakfast,'" Rogers said. "She ran straight past the chicken, literally jumped on me and started licking my face."

Meanwhile in the Scottish Highlands, three-year-old cocker spaniel Aggie survived an even more harrowing ordeal. She fell through a snowy cornice near the summit of Fionn Bheinn on Sunday while hiking with her owners and spent the night alone on an exposed mountainside where temperatures dropped below minus 10°C.

When the Dundonnell Mountain Rescue Team helped the hiking group descend safely Sunday evening, Aggie remained missing. Three team members volunteered their free time Monday morning to return to the 933-meter peak, unable to bear leaving her behind.

"You've got a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach, it's like you've left a member of your family there," said team leader Iain Nesbitt. A local deer stalker helped transport the rescuers up the mountain through whiteout conditions.

They found Aggie curled in a ball just 10 meters from where she fell, cold but alive. "It's always amazing how resilient dogs are, they go into survival mode," Nesbitt said.

Sunny's Take

Both rescues showcase something remarkable about human nature: strangers dropping everything to help reunite families with their beloved pets. DroneSAR volunteer Caroline Coward summed up the feeling perfectly: "It's hard to put into words, but it makes it all worthwhile."

Rogers called her rescue "literally a miracle," crediting the volunteers who gave up their Friday night and Saturday to search. The Scottish rescue team gave up their Monday morning simply because they were dog lovers who understood the bond.

These stories remind us that compassion shows up in unexpected places, whether it's motorists pulling over on a busy highway or mountain rescuers climbing back up a frozen peak in their free time.