Spaniel rescued on Christmas Day

Dart Lifeboat rescues Lilah the Springer Spaniel on Christmas Day from an inaccessible cove in South Devon. Dart RNLI lifeboat had their second Christmas Day launch in the station’s brief four year history. The eight year old spaniel chased seagulls over rocks to an isolated cove and could not return without rescue from the sea. Jenifer and David Hallum were walking Lilah, their eight year old black and white Springer Spaniel on Pilchard Cove in Start Bay, South Devon, when she raced off chasing seagulls. Somehow she scrambled up over the rocks and made her way to the inaccessible Waterfall Cove. Her owners raised the alarm at the village shop in Torcross, where Andy Pound, leader of the local Coastguard Team, was behind the counter. He knew the area well and realised that the only way to reach the cove was by sea. The volunteer crew were requested to launch at 12:07 hoping that they might be the first lifeboat in the country to be called out on Christmas Day. In fact the crew at Tower Lifeboat station on the Thames had been called out three minutes earlier. The Dart team did however score many firsts with this rescue. It was the first in which Owen Mallier, the latest Deputy Launching Authority to join the team, was in sole charge and the first rescue ever for Ewen Menzies, who is the latest volunteer crewman to join the eighteen others at the Dart station. When the lifeboat crew of helmsman Buster Hart and crewmen Haydn Glanvill and Ewen Menzies, landed on the cove sixteen minutes after launching, Lilah was content to be led on her lead back to the rocks that she had descended from, but then panicked, threw off her collar and refused to go any further. She happily hopped into the inshore lifeboat however and was reunited with her grateful owners after a four minute boat trip.