Missing dog found alive after surviving cliff fall in horrendous conditions

An adopted family dog who plummeted off a cliff after going missing for 24 hours has been found.

Jodie Davis and her friend were walking with dogs Tess and Shep on their leads along the Llŷn Peninsula in Wales when one got loose and ran.

She had been throwing a frisbee around with her friend when Tess managed to wriggle out of her extended lead when the disc was blown away.

The sharpei cross Yorkshire terrier, 8, vanished while running for the frisbee, igniting a desperate family search at around 5pm on Monday.

Mum Julie said: ‘They got to a very high point on the track with a drop that goes down the mountainside, the frisbee got caught in the wind and went down the drop, Tess pulled hard on her lead over the edge and the clip came off her lead that attached to her harness.

‘The lead clip was often stiff to put on and sometimes wouldn’t close properly.

‘The girls lost sight of Tess and called out her name continuously, they asked other dog walkers who were there at the time if they had seen her and no one had.

‘They searched for an hour before deciding to go home to tell me. They didn’t have a signal on their phones so drove back home frantic and deeply upset.’

After coming home to find her daughter crying, Julie stepped out with her boyfriend Arthur, eldest son Jess and Jodie’s friend to comb the cliff for Tess.

‘Tess went out of sight down the mountainside at 4:30pm that day, we were all there for 5pm searching for her,’ Julie said.

‘We went down the nant right to the bottom of the mountain that she disappeared over to see if we could see her at the bottom or stuck on a ledge somewhere.

‘We only had our phone torches and darkness was drawing in. We fell over tree trunks and climbed crags up to the side of the mountain – I have big bruises on my legs from falling over in the dark.’

The family jumped into their 4×4 to drive around the Nant Gwrtheyrn mountainside hoping to spot Tess. ‘There was no sign of her,’ Julie said.

‘It was dark, freezing cold and very windy and extremely dangerous. By midnight we all grouped back at the car park and had to make the difficult decision to go home.

‘I was devastated, crying uncontrollably, shaking from the cold and didn’t want to leave her there. It felt like losing a child.

‘Tess and I have a strong bond, she absolutely adores me and I do her. She’s very rarely away from me, she’s always by my side.

‘My heart was breaking knowing she was out there somewhere injured in the cold weather or lying dead at the bottom of the cliff. I couldn’t sleep that night.’

Locals joined the search team the following morning after the family pleaded for help on Facebook, wary that blustery weather would make an already seemingly impossible search harder.

‘We had come to the conclusion that Tess was more than likely dead and that we were now looking for her body,’ Julie said.

But when all seemed lost, a soaked and downtrodden Julie heard the rest of the search team shout that they had found Tess.

‘They handed her to me so I put her in my car she smothered my face with kisses then jumped into the back seat where my sandwiches were and ate the lot in one bolt, she was starving and shivering,’ she said.

‘We found her without her harness on so are guessing she was caught in something overnight, perhaps the harness saved her life and broke the fall.

‘She has marks where the harness was like she was trapped in it somehow and managed to break free.’

Vets said Tess only suffered minor injuries, having bashed her chin, grazed her legs and had a few scratches.

‘She is a little warrior,’ Julie said, adding: ‘It really was an impressive search party for my precious Tess.’

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