Kevin Matthews was hiking in north-central Pennsylvania when his dog lay down and refused to move. Matthews faced an agonizing decision: stay with Sable, who seemed exhausted and unable to continue, or leave her behind and find help.
“I was very worried,” said Matthews, who was hiking the Golden Eagle Trail with his 102-pound Tibetan mastiff and German shepherd mix.
They often hike together, he said, so Sable, 9, is accustomed to long and arduous treks. “She goes crazy if I don’t take her out for a hike on Sunday afternoons,” he said.
About halfway into a 10-mile hike that day, July 12, Matthews said he noticed Sable panting.
“The hike was pretty strenuous,” he said, adding that although they hadn’t done this hike before, they had recently gone on comparable hikes that Sable easily finished.
“We’ve done up to 20-mile hikes,” Matthews, 63, said. “She has lots of endurance.”
He encouraged her to drink water, and she seemed to improve.
Not long after, though, Sable was struggling to walk, so they turned around and began their descent, making it a few miles down.
“She would walk a few steps, then sit down,” Matthews said, adding that it was around 4 p.m. and that he had no cell service. “I didn’t know what to do. We were stuck up there.”
He decided the best option was to get help. Sable was lying on an embankment, and Matthews stacked rocks around her in an attempt to keep her in the same spot. Then he started running.
“She’s been my hiking buddy for a long time,” he said. “We’re very close.”
He ran about two miles to the road at the bottom of the mountain, where he waved down a car and explained the situation. The driver happened to be a member of the Waterville Volunteer Fire Company, who called Tiffany Young, a volunteer firefighter, whose husband is the fire chief.
“We stopped what we were doing,” Young said. “We laced up our boots and headed out the door.”
Young and her husband drove to the trailhead, where they met Matthews, a forest ranger and another volunteer firefighter dispatched to help. They hiked up the mountain until they found Sable sitting exactly as Matthews had left her.
“I was so happy to see her,” Matthews said. The story was first reported by local news station WNEP.
The rescuers used a Reeves stretcher — typically meant for carrying injured people — to transport Sable down the mountain. In wider stretches of the trail, one person held each of the four corners, but where the path narrowed, only two could carry it. They all took turns, including Matthews.
Sable “was definitely very lethargic,” Young said.
It took rescuers about four hours to get the dog and bring her down, Young said. They had to walk slowly because Sable was cumbersome to transport, and they had to take regular breaks.
Young said Matthews cried tears of joy when they got to the bottom.
“He was so relieved that we got her out of there alive. … He was trying to hand out money to buy us all dinner,” Young said. “We all hugged.”
Young, a volunteer firefighter for about 30 years, said the call was a first. The department — which is run by volunteers — often responds to injured or stranded hikers, she said, but rarely animals. She and her husband have two dogs, and she said they were glad to help one in need.
Matthews told The Washington Post that he thought Sable had become exhausted from overexerting herself but, upon returning home, examined her and surmised that she had sprained her front right leg during the hike. He said he planned to take her to the vet the following morning — about a four-hour drive from the cabin where they were staying near the trail — but then decided not to because she seemed to be acting normally, aside from a small limp.
Matthews said that he has been monitoring her closely over the past week and that she has improved.
“Each day she’s getting better,” he said.
Matthews said that going forward they will avoid difficult and long hikes.
“We’re going to be more careful,” he said.
Matthews said he is indebted to the rescuers who volunteered their Sunday afternoon to save his dog.
“I’m so grateful,” he said. “I don’t know what we would have done without them.”
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