Ok, so it took me a bit longer than a day to get to posting.
Saturday started with our monthly high angle training exercise. I had to get up at 5:40 to make the 6:00 meeting time. We hit the road rather quickly and were on-site in Nahal Halamish by around 7:00. It’s a nice place for training, as it’s a 30-40m waterfall/cliff only 20 minutes out of Arad on the road to the Dead Sea.
The training was well-organized, and concentrated on knot-passing and other sudden problems that can come up. The thing is, outside of training and refresher courses from the army’s high angle school, we don’t often practice this. I was quite happy to see it, and I think we should actually do it more.
We finished around noon, and by the time we packed up the gear and drove back to Arad it was 1pm. I got home a few minutes later.
Often I’m too tired to hit the shower right away, but this time hunger got the better of me so I quickly showered and got lunch on the stove. I had JUST finished making lunch when my phone beeped. No way…can’t be a rescue. I was sure it was Ana saying ‘hi’. Nope. It’s a rescue. I left my lunch untouched on the table and ran out.
The rescue was a simple “go fetch” with a twist. A “go fetch” rescue is a basic rescue where we know exactly where someone is, they’re not really injured other than perhaps a bit dehydrated but cannot continue or are lost for whatever reason. What made this “go fetch” rescue unique was that the victim was…well…a dog. A girl had called in and said she was dehydrated as well as her dog, but reading between the lines she seemed fine. I can understand her wanting to say it that way, but in the end even if she were open with us we’d have gone out. After all, nobody is going to abandon their dog to die in the desert. If she stayed with her dog, we’d just be rescuing her at night.
On the way out I called Ana’s mother’s boyfriend who is very knowledgeable about dogs to find out what to do with a dehydrated dog. We got there, helped out the 4-legged victim and get everyone back into the jeeps for the ride out.
I got home at 4pm…exhausted.
Fun weekend!
