Following heroic rescue, dogs reunited with their owner

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    BUTTE-SILVER BOW, Mont. (The Montana Standard) — Bandit and Georgie burst through the front door of the Butte-Silver Bow Animal Shelter on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon — a double-vision blitz of fur, paws and wagging tails — and proceeded to rush headlong into their owner’s waiting arms some 48 hours after their innate sense of adventure got them into a bit of a pickle high above Homestake Pass.

“I couldn’t tell you how they did it,” J.D. Santifer, an animal control officer, said of how the husky-Lab pups were able to get themselves in such a predicament.

It took a collaborative rescue effort between multiple agencies, some ingenuity and the assistance of a state-of-the-art infrared drone to make this reunion possible.

It started with a phone call.

Around 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Santifer was notified by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office that a group of hikers had spotted a pair of dogs “way up high on a cliff” at Homestake Pass, just southeast of Butte.

Upon arriving at the scene — on the north side of the railroad track roughly a quarter mile from Homestake Lake — Santifer, along with members of the fire department, law enforcement and 15-90 Search and Rescue, were met with an utterly baffling sight as they gazed up the precipitous slope.

On a nearly vertical cliff of decomposed granite that had been carved out in the 1880s by Northern Pacific Railway, two dogs — later identified as Bandit and Georgie — had inexplicably managed to either clamber up or descend down its seemingly unscalable face.

The pair of intrepid canines were now suspended on a narrow outcropping of rock about 30 feet below the summit and over 100 feet above the railroad below.

“It was pretty precarious,” Santifer said. “The dogs were pretty stressed out.”

The question that Santifer and everyone else present was left asking was an obvious one: How in the world did those dogs get up there?

“We still don’t know,” said Brad Belke, commander of 15-90 Search and Rescue based in Butte. “We don’t think they came down the cliff.”

Belke, whose unit provided “the manpower” as firemen eventually rappelled down the side of the cliff to retrieve the stranded dogs, speculated that Bandit and Georgie must have somehow scampered up the steep face while chasing after an animal and — like a cat that discovers it has bitten off more than it can chew after zipping up a tree — found themselves stuck.

While the riddle of how Bandit and Georgie managed to accomplish a gravity-defying feat that would make a mountain goat envious will likely never be fully answered, the personnel on scene had a more pressing dilemma to solve in that moment — how to get the dogs off the ledge.

The choice was made to operate from above the dogs rather than from the base of the cliff. ATVs were used to haul rescue workers and equipment to the apex. Belke said they were familiar with the area from the Butte 100 bike race.

However, the area above where the dogs were jutted out beyond Bandit and Georgie’s location, making it nearly impossible for rescue workers to see them.

The team opted to utilize a cutting-edge infrared drone — one Belke said “you’re not going to find in a store” — to give themselves a better vantage point.

The drone was flown out and used to transmit thermal images of the dogs, who otherwise easily blended into their surroundings, and the layout of the cliff leading to them back to the rescue team.

One of 15-90’s officers, Rod Alne, a high-angle rescue expert who served as a pararescue specialist during his 27-year Air Force career, considered a variety of methods but ultimately suggested using an MPD belay, a pulley system that allows both raising and lowering with a single device.

“It’s a complex, but very effective rope system,” Belke said.

With load-bearing ropes tied off on two separate trees and the drone broadcasting his location back to the team above, Jerry Ellison of the Butte-Silver Bow Fire Department descended the cliff face until he reached Bandit and Georgie. Leashes were attached and, one by one, the dogs were hoisted up to safe ground and then transferred to the animal shelter.

All in all, the rescue operation took about three hours. Following the ordeal, Bandit and Georgie were eager for a bowl of kibble and a good night’s sleep.

“They were happy, hungry and ready to get out of there,” Santifer said.

Belke said that the operation was a success, not just because the dogs were safely recovered but because a group of organizations that doesn’t often work together was able to collaborate and combine their unique skills and resources to pull off a well-orchestrated rescue.

“The dogs were safe and no one got hurt,’ Belke said. “It was an incredible training exercise. A lot of people learned a lot of stuff.”

On Tuesday, Bandit and Georgie were reunited with their owner, Antone Rowe, a Butte-born, Anaconda resident who earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Montana State before spending a decade in the Marines where he worked as a military dog handler.

At the behest of his wife — “she said, ‘it’s the dogs or me,'” — Rowe “re-homed” Bandit and Georgie last week. He said for the first few days the new owner texted him pictures keeping him apprised of how Bandit and Georgie were adapting to their new home, but as the weekend approached “contact ceased.”

It still remains unclear when, where or how the dogs and their new owner became separated.

On Monday, Rowe’s brother sent him a Facebook post from 15-90 Rescue informing him of the odyssey his dogs had been through.

“It’s heartbreaking to see your dogs in that situation,” Rowe said.

After seeing the images of the rescue, Rowe and the new owner “mutually agreed” that he should reclaim ownership of Bandit and Georgie, setting the stage for Tuesday’s reunion.

And as far as his wife’s ultimatum?

“She ended up going anyway, so I get the dogs back,” Rowe said. “And that works for me.”

Rowe said he was grateful for the rescue personnel who made every effort to ensure that his dogs were safely returned.

“I think it’s an awesome thing,” Rowe said. “They were willing to go out there and have compassion for those dogs. It’s a remarkable thing and I’m grateful for that.”

It’s safe to say Rowe is fond of dogs, and he was certainly thankful to be reunited with his two furry explorers who he described as “escape artists.”

“It feels great, it’s good to have them back,” Rowe said as Bandit and Georgie bounded about like a pair of four-legged pinballs.

Thanks to the efforts of several emergency operation teams, what started out as a true-life cliffhanger on Sunday gave way to a cheerful ending.

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