Review: Never Leave the Dog Behind by Helen Mort

RECENTLY on the news there was a surprising report of a St Bernard dog being rescued from Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain, by the Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team.

Usually, it is the other way round with injured walkers or climbers being found by a SARDA (Search and Rescue Dog’s Association) dog who work very much in conjunction with the various Mountain Rescue Teams throughout the UK.

This new book my Helen Mort, due to be published on 1 October, includes an account of a practice Search and Rescue using a SARDA dog – just one of the thirteen chapters in the book.

The book is a compelling account of mountain adventures, and captures the unbridled joy of heading into the hills with a four-legged friend. We live in a world full of dog lovers and many people count their dogs as members of the family.

And mountains, places of risk, drama and heroism are the perfect stage for people to enact their canine obsession and bring into focus how much walkers and mountaineers love being with their dogs in these wild places.

The Gough Memorial on Helvellyn in the Lake District shows this bonding between a dog and its master when Foxie, Charles Gough’s dog, stayed with his owner’s body following a fatal fall off Striding Edge for three months until it was found by a local shepherd. This act is now recognised in an ale from Tirril Brewery called “Charles Gough’s Old Faithful”.

Helen Mort is a poet and novelist and was five times winner of the Foyle Young Poets award.

In 2010 she became the youngest ever poet in residence at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, and in 2013 was appointed as the Derbyshire Poet Laureate, her current County of residence. She is a graduate from Christ College, Cambridge, and is currently a creative writing fellow in the School of English at Leeds University. Her novels include “Division Street” and “Black Car Burning” and she has written poetry books “No Map Could Show Them” and “Opposite”. She has also produced a book on Lake District Trail Running, one of her particular hobbies where she is usually accompanied by one of her faithful four-legged friends.

For both dog lovers, and the rest of the readership, this is a fascinating book by Helen Mort of life in the mountains with different types of canines – Whippets to Border Collies, Staffies to Retrievers. An excellent read!

by John Burland