A hunting dog survived a 30-foot plunge down a disused mine shaft in Utah's Tooele County, where a rescuer found the animal remarkably unscathed.
Here's what to know
Tooele County Search and Rescue safely retrieved the dog from the mine, according to FOX 13. The animal darted through the opening after his owner approached it during a hunt in the mountains near Tooele.
Before moving the dog, rescue team member Crystal Sides checked him for injuries.
"The dog was in perfect health. Once I got down to the dog, I felt around and felt his legs, made sure there was no tenderness, no broken bones, no bleeding before I started handling him too much," Sides said.
Both people and animals face risks from the area's abandoned mine openings. The rescue team said similar incidents have occurred there before.
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More background
Steve Fluke, who heads the Department of Natural Resources' Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program, estimated that Utah has roughly 17,000 hazardous or abandoned mine entrances. That figure excludes prospects and pits that do not necessarily present hazards.
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Old mines can evade detection because their entrances are hard to spot and historical records are missing. Estimates indicate a particularly high concentration of these openings in Tooele County, which includes mining districts such as Gold Hill.
At Fivemile Pass, recreation takes place amid open mine shafts. Tooele County Search and Rescue member Jeremy Evans identified the shafts as a hazard for visitors riding utility terrain vehicles and off-highway vehicles.
"Sometimes they just end up driving right into an open pit and they get stuck on the bottom," Evans said.
What's being done?
The Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program has sealed roughly 7,000 mine entrances. Finding the remaining, undiscovered openings is itself an obstacle to addressing the hazards, the report noted.
A map compiled by Tooele County Search and Rescue records known mine locations and documents openings left by the county's mining activity.
For anyone exploring the area, Sides advised close attention to the surrounding terrain.
Some pits offer little opportunity to recognize the danger from a distance, she cautioned: Visitors may already be close when they notice them.
"There's a lot of open-pit mines that you don't realize that they're there until you're up on them, and there's loose gravel and loose rock all around them," Sides said.
Where can I learn more?
The dog rescued in Utah is one of several to survive a dangerous fall or an ordeal outdoors. These stories follow dogs rescued from an abandoned well, cliffs, mountainous terrain, and a waterfall.
• In South Carolina, a dog fell 50 feet into an abandoned well before being rescued.
• In Arkansas, a missing dog was found 150 feet down a cliff at Petit Jean State Park.
• A tiny dog survived nearly three weeks alone in England's Lake District before being rescued.
• In England, volunteers lowered themselves on ropes to rescue a Labrador that fell beneath Pecca Falls.
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