Fluffy Cloé on the road to recovery
“She was doing much better, but you could see that she has gone through a bit of trauma because she did not wag her tail”
A security guard who spotted missing Cloë trapped at the top of the Witpoortjie Waterfall in the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden in Poortview and the ER24 personnel who rappelled down the slippery and rocky mountain to rescue her were hailed as heroes by the Sauer family from Constantia Kloof.
The friendly and fluffy Chow-breed dog, Cloë, had her owners worried and praying for days after she escaped from a friend’s property in Muldersdrift last week.
Jeane-Louis, the head of the family, told Northsider that they decided to take Cloë to the house of a friend who owns a similar breed male dog, since she has been on heat and struggling to cope.
“She’s about six years old and when she is on heat she starts crying and moaning all the time. When I Google-searched these symptoms I learnt that every dog wants to try and have a pair of pups at least once a year. So we took her to the friend’s house on Tuesday morning (13 October) and she escaped from the property the following evening,” he explained.
Instead of blaming their friends, the families rallied together to search for Cloë by creating online posts and offering a reward for his safe return.
“My wife Natalie and I were out there 24/ 7 looking for her, without any success. However, on Thursday I got a call that some attempts were made to stop her as she was running on Robert Broom Drive in Krugersdorp, but she ran into the Garden,” he said.
As she tried to navigate her way out of the tranquil terrain of the Garden, she ended up at the waterfall where any bad move would have gotten her killed or seriously injured.
“With our prayers and hopes for her to be found safe, a guard at the Garden who had seen the dog posters managed to spot her from a mile away and made contact with me on Friday (16 October),” Jeane-Louis explained.
He immediately contacted ER24 who were at the garden in minutes to rescue the animal.
Spokersperson for ER24, Ross Campbell said, “Paramedics had to rappel 40 metres down from the top of the mountain to the dog, which was found limping and dehydrated. It is suspected that Cloë had fallen down the mountain to the top of the waterfall. Paramedics then lowered themselves and Cloë down to the ground before rushing her to a local vet for further care”.
Reflecting on the trauma after returning home, Jeane-Louis said, “She was doing much better, but you could see that she has gone through a bit of trauma because she did not wag her tail”.
A grateful Natalie saw the whole rescue mission as a miracle. “The groups of people who really prayed with us were quite huge and we are grateful for every community members’ effort to help – it’s a miracle that we got another chance to be with her,” she said.
When asked if Cloë will be leaving the property anytime soon, the obvious answer was a big fat NO from the couple. “To solve the problem of her being in distress for seeking a companion, we will get her fixed,” the duo laughed as they played with Cloë on the lawn.
