Men honored for saving ‘Clifford’ – a dog stuck on a cliff for 5 days
Published at | Updated at
BLISS — It started with a Facebook notification that said there was a dog stuck on a cliff.
Richard Jensen and Dave Wright, the men behind Friends Furever Animal Rescue, received the message last October. The rescue organization has been around for almost four years and volunteers have helped thousands of dogs, but this was a call unlike any other.
“There had been a local resident of the area who said this dog had been stuck up there at least five days,” Richard Jensen recalls. “I’m really not sure how he got there but he couldn’t get up or down.”
Jensen, his wife and Wright loaded up from their homes in the Twin Falls area and headed to Bliss. When they arrived, they launched a drone to see exactly where the animal was and found him where the red arrow is pointing in the photo below.
The dog-saving duo set up the mountain and after 45 minutes, they reached Clifford with food and water.
“We decided once we got there we were going to take some time and let him become familiar with us before we proceeded,” Wright says.
After becoming acquainted with the dog for 45 minutes, both men put leashes on him and Wright started down in front with Jensen in the rear. As they made their way down, they came up with the name Clifford for their new friend and after 30 minutes or so, they were back on solid ground making an appointment to see a vet.
“He had a lot of sores on him that were new and old along with some bacterial and fungal problems,” Wright says. “He appeared as if he’d had a chain around his neck because there no hair around his neck at all and he kind of walked a little rough.”
Wright shared about Clifford on the Friends Furever Animal Rescue Facebook page and the post went viral. Folks from everywhere contributed money to help get the dog better and a woman in Twin Falls soon adopted him.
Wright and Jensen say they didn’t do anything special – and they’d do it again to help any animal in need.
“We do it to better the animals and for our community, but it’s really geared toward the animals,” Jensen says.
Wright adds, “There’snothing really heroic about it as much as it’s just something that we do. We take action.”