Rose the dog rescued from Mixenden cave after seven days underground

  • Helen Steel reports on the seven-day rescue effort

A dog has been rescued from a cave after being trapped underground for a week.

Rose, a Jack Russell-cross, slipped into a crevice in rocks off Dudley Crescent in Mixenden, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, on Thursday 26 September.

West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service quickly abandoned attempts to free her after deciding the gap she had slipped through was too narrow.

Since then a team of volunteers has been working around-the-clock using drilling and cutting equipment to try to free her.

On Thursday afternoon - almost exactly a week on - thousands of people tuned in on Facebook as a livestream showed Rose being released and carried from the site in the arms of one of the volunteers.

There were cheers from those at the site as she emerged.

She would be taken "straight to the vet" they said.

Rose the Jack Russell-cross was trapped for seven days. Credit: Christie Birkhead

The drama began when Rose fell around 15ft through a 12-inch gap in the rock face.

After the fire and rescue service called off its own efforts to retrieve her, volunteers came from as far afield as Lincolnshire and Scotland to help.

Using power tools including electric saws and drills they spent hours every day chipping away at the rock face, removing tonnes of rubble.

Food and water were lowered into the gap to keep Rose alive.

More than £11,000 was raised online to support the rescue effort.

Twelve-year-old Logan Birkhead, one of Rose's owners, told ITV News before she came out that he had cried when he first heard what had happened.

He said: "When she gets out she's getting in the bath with me."

Ben Kitchingman, who led the rescue efforts and had been sleeping on-site in his van despite becoming a father on Tuesday, told ITV News he was looking forward to "getting home and spending some time with my newborn".

He said he had been told by the emergency services at the outset: "You've got better tools than we have. Good luck."

He added: "At one point I lost hope. I went home at six in the morning and thought the dog was dead. Then I got a message off a lad who rung me and said he could hear her so I turned my motor around and came back."

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