Mr Charlie’s amazing adventure

A 16-year-old dog with a dicky heart and breathing difficulties survived four days of being lost in Carricks Creek bushland, the Illawarra Flame reports

Mr Charlie’s four-day adventure in a lantana-infested creek began on Sunday, 20 February when his owner, Coledale’s Gary Claypole, was woken from a Sunday afternoon nap by the sudden sound of running and barking.

“Charlie is 16 years old and he’s got a few medical issues, so it was really out of character. I thought I’d better take him for a walk. I opened the gate and he took off like a scalded cat.”

Gary’s neighbour, Dana, and her daughter Asher saw the dog get away. “Little Asher gave chase. She came back and her eyes were wide as saucers, saying that he’d run off down Lawrence Hargrave Drive, in the traffic.

Gary jumped in his ute and drove down immediately. A passer-by waved him down to say he’d seen the dog run into the yard of a house with a creek running beside it.

“It’s called Carricks Creek. It’s inaccessible to get down into, it’s very steep, very overgrown.”

The man offered to help – he went in, had a look but didn’t find Charlie.

Charlie was still missing on Monday morning, when Gary went back to have another search.

“I called, ‘Mr Charlie, where are you?’ No response. Then I noticed that the creek is piped out to the ocean, to beside the Coledale Surf Life Saving Club.”

For the next few days, Gary and a friend, Eric, went down to where the creek pipes out, expecting to find Charlie’s body washed up. “Because during all this time there was torrential rain and the creek was swollen and the pipe was pumping out water. And I thought, ‘At least I’ll have his body’.”

During the hunt for Mr Charlie, Gary called on the fire brigade, the SES and the police but, with wild wet weather surging throughout the state, emergency services were too tied up with other work. Through it all, however, the community was on the lookout for Charlie.

“He’s well loved. He’ll pull me across the road to say hello to somebody. Children will be walking by and I don’t know who they are and they’ll say, hi, Mr Charlie.

“My son had put his image up on the Lost and Found pets page on Facebook, I’d put up signs at the local cafes.

“The lady in the house where he ran into her was very nice. She’d left out food and water. I’d left the gate open and the light on in the hope …

“Every morning I’d get up. And there was no Charlie. Nobody had seen him, he hadn’t been knocked or picked up by the council. He wasn’t at the pound. I just knew that he was still in that creek. And he was probably dead because he ran all the way. He’s got a bad heart, he’s over 16 and he’s got an airway problem.”

By Thursday, Gary was almost resigned to the idea that he’d never see Charlie again.

“I’d already started to throw away a few things of his, but I thought, I’m not going to throw away his bed or his water bowls.

“I said a prayer to my wife, who recently passed away, a year or so ago. I said, ‘Deb, have you got any pull up there with a big man? Now’s the time – I need him back.’ I think she had words.”

At 8pm on the Thursday, when Charlie had been missing for four days and the rain was bucketing down, Gary heard a knock at his front door.

“It was my neighbour, Dana, saying that a little girl, Lilly, beside the creek was doing her homework near an open window and had heard a dog coughing and barking. She said, ‘Quick Gary, Charlie must still be there.

“She’d sent her husband, Jarod and her son, Jake, on ahead, because it was pouring rain, they were in their wet-weather gear.”

Gary jumped in his ute and joined them.

“It was dark by this time. Jarod and his son managed to get down into the creek with torches and they were up to their knees in water and the elephant-ear plants and bullrushes were up over their heads – that’s how overgrown it is.

“We were all on the bank, singing out, ‘Charlie, Charlie!’

"Jarod said, ‘Be quiet! We’re trying to listen for him.”

Then, through the raindrops, they heard the soft jingle of a dog tag.

“Jarod was able to follow that. They didn’t see him until they were right on top of him. He was behind a bush, tangled up in weeds, shivering, drenched, only a few inches above the water line.

“Miraculously, he’d survived this ordeal.”

Gary rushed Charlie to a 24-hour vet, the ARH Animal Referral Hospital in Fairy Meadow. The little Jack Russell had lost two kilos, was badly dehydrated and had blood on his tail. “He had two puncture marks, about a centimetre and a half apart, which looked suspiciously like a snake bite.”

After two nights at the hospital and fluids to rehydrate, Gary brought him home. However, Mr Charlie’s adventure wasn’t quite over.

“They said that his tail had died from the bite mark down. So I took him back, they amputated his tail, and he hasn’t looked back. He has started to eat, walking further and further each day.

“I’m so grateful to all of the people who looked for him, neighbours were driving around at night. Everybody’s just been amazing.

“It was raining the whole time and it was dark and slippery and overgrown and generally unpleasant  – nobody can believe that he survived out there for the time he did.”

As the Flame went to press Gary reported that Mr Charlie had his mojo back!

“The stitches have been removed and he is showing off his new shortened tail,” he said.

As well as Dana and Jarod, Lilly and her mum, Mel, Gary would like to thank all the neighbours who went out looking for Charlie, including Eric Bruton; Brendan & family; Cassandra, Summer & Ebony Cahill; Moira & Ross Cunningham; Robyn & Patricia; and the staff at Earth Walker & Sketch cafes who put posters in their windows.