The loyalty of dogs can be legendary. Most of us will have grown up with stories like Greyfriar’s Bobby and Lassie. More recently the story of Hachiko, the Akita who waited at Shibuya Station in Tokyo, every day, for 10 years after his master died, earned him an eventual Shinto funeral, a movie and a statue.
Now, another story of incredible canine loyalty has come to light.
On August 19, 71-year-old Rich Moore left his home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, with his loyal Jack Russell terrier, Finney. Moore planned to summit Blackhead Peak, which towers 12,500 feet above sea level and requires an “extremely rigorous” hike to reach the top.
It was a warm, clear day, and Moore was an “experienced hiker” according to those who knew him – but something went wrong. When Moore and Finney failed to return home that evening, loved ones reported them missing. Despite an extensive search mission, rescuers were unable to locate the duo.
In fact, Moore died of hypothermia, despite it being the northern summer.
And Finney the dog?
Finney refused to leave his side. She survived for more than two months until a local hunter stumbled upon Moore’s body near the Lower Blanco drainage basin on October 30. Authorities were able to recover Moore’s body the following day.
“It just brings us all to tears the loyalty of that dog,” said Delinda Vanne-Brightyn, a member of the search and rescue team that initially led the search for Moore’s body, in an interview with CNN.
While Finney had lost more than half of her body weight, she was otherwise healthy.
While a pet dog will, in extremis, eat their owner’s corpse if they’re, say, locked in an apartment with no other option but starvation, Finney was lucky to have fresh sources of food running wild nearby.
She likely survived on water from nearby streams and by hunting small animals like mice and chipmunks.
As for Moore’s death, no foul play was involved.
Archuleta County Coroner Brad Hunt told The Washington Post that Moore died of hypothermia. He was wearing only a cotton hooded sweatshirt, and temperatures at high elevations can reach dangerously low levels even in August.
“Even though the weather in Pagosa Springs was fairly nice, it was fairly cold up in those mountains,” Hunt said.
Vanne-Brightyn said the peak was so steep that she and her certified K9 search dog had to be inserted into the area by helicopter during their search back in August. The search and rescue team started just below the mountain’s peak and moved west toward the trailhead, where they found Moore’s abandoned car.
The team spent a cumulative 2,000 hours searching for Moore and Finney before the search was called off. The hunter ultimately found them more than two miles east of the peak, in the opposite direction of the search. It’s unclear why Moore headed that way. “[It] defied all of our lost person behavior that he went over the other side of the mountain,” Vanne-Brightyn told CNN.
According to Hunt, “Basically, he got up into the hiking area and looked as though he had gotten disoriented.”
All That’s Interesting
Truly, as one social media comment read, “There is no love like the unconditional love of dogs.”
