Dog runs 4 miles to find help for injured owner who crashed his truck

Brandon Garrett might still be at the bottom of an Oregon canyon if it weren’t for his dog Blue, who ran nearly four miles to get help on the night of June 2. Garrett was rescued the next morning, along with three other dogs. with him as he drove his truck off the road into the ravine.

Garrett, who lives in the small town of Halfway near the Idaho state line, drove to a campground in eastern Oregon on June 2 to meet a friend. While driving his truck north on U.S. Forest Service Road 39, 62-year-old Old missed a turn and, he said, drove off the embankment into a steep ravine a statement from the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.

Somehow, Garrett and his four dogs survived the crash, and he was able to crawl above the creek, where he hunkered down and spent the night. Meanwhile, while Garret was stranded there, his dog Blue went to get help. The dog remembered where they had camped before and ran nearly four miles through the woods to reach the campsite where Garrett’s friend had been waiting for him. It is not clear how much time has passed since Garrett and his dogs previously visited that spot.

The friend knew something was wrong when Blue showed up alone, so he notified Garrett’s brother, Tyree Garrett, who called on family and friends to form a search party. They looked for him that night, and the next morning, while driving down the road, Tyree found his brother’s white truck on its side at the bottom of the ravine. He also saw injured dogs lying nearby.

“It stopped my heart,” Tyree told the newspaper New York Times. He said that because of the steep slope, he didn’t think his brother could have survived the crash. “I just thought, damn, my brother was gone.”

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Tyree reported the crash to the local sheriff’s office around 9:30 a.m. The BCSO responded to the scene, along with an ambulance from Halfway and first responders from Baker County Search and Rescue and the Pine Valley Rural Fire District.

“Sheriff Ash arrived and located the vehicle, along with a dog, in the steep, rugged ravine,” the BCSO explained in the statement. “While looking for an access point to the creek, he heard a person screaming for help.”

Ash found Garrett alive about 100 yards away from his truck. He administered first aid as first responders and USFS workers cleared a path into the ravine with chainsaws. Rescuers also found Garrett’s three other dogs, who were still alive near the crash site. One of the dogs had broken its hip and injured its femur, while another broke its leg in two places, police said Time.

Using high-angle rope techniques and a rescue basket, the search and rescue team extracted Garrett from the ravine and placed him in an ambulance. He was then taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. According to his brother, a full recovery is expected.

“He has a cracked ankle and his body itself is really bruised and battered,” Tyree told the newspaper Time. “So at his age it will take a while for him to get back on his feet.”