TEMECULA, Calif. - A family who
left their dog for dead after a
desert hiking accident five weeks
ago has been reunited with the pooch
after a Riverside County hiker and
his brother heard it barking and
pulled it from a 30-foot-deep pit.
Stephen Schwartz,
17, was hiking with his brother,
father and two cousins on April
18 near the ghost town of Panamint
City on the western edge of Death
Valley National Park when their
dog, Shadow, fell into the pit.
The Schwartzs
heard 10-year-old Shadow whimpering
and tried to use an aluminum ladder
from a nearby ranger station to
reach the dog. But the ladder fell
out of reach and eventually, Shadow
stopped responding to their calls.
Thinking
the dog was dead, the Schwartzs
placed an improvised wooden cross
over the pit, said a prayer and
returned home to Trona, a tiny town
in far northern San Bernardino County.
But
Shadow was very much alive, surviving
on water at the bottom of the hole.
On Sunday,
Temecula resident Scott Mertz and
his brother, Darren Mertz, of Ridgecrest,
were searching for the source of
a spring near Panamint City.
They
stumbled on a deep, 4-foot-wide pit
with a ladder inside and a strange
cross-like design over it. Stopping
to rest, the brothers tossed rocks
into the pit and dared each other
to climb inside. Then they heard barking.
"We
looked at each other and my brother
said, 'Is that coming from the hole?'"
Scott Mertz, 36, said. "We
were just horrified that there was
a dog down there."
His brother,
Darren, said: "We weren't going
to leave without the dog."
Using
an old hose from a nearby water storage
tank, Darren, 34, lowered his brother
into the hole until he could reach
the ladder and climb down to the dog.
Scott managed to grab a frightened
and skinny Shadow and his brother
hauled them back up.
The Mertz
brothers called the number on Shadow's
tags and told the Schwartzs their
beloved pet had been found 35 days
after they left it for dead.
"This
tops the list - I never felt so
happy before," Stephen Schwartz
said Tuesday. "I prayed that
I would see her again and it happened."
The cocker
spaniel-beagle mix appears to be
in good health despite losing 5
pounds, he said.
"Last
night, she came up to me and started
begging for food like she always
did," Schwartz said.
