“She was big and powerful and very demanding,” says Freyja Kjartansdóttir, who is in Dýrfinna’s team and searched for all six days.
“Bella’s owners took her for a walk by the lava towards the smelter on the first day of summer. They met people with two big dogs and one of the dogs attacked Bella and bit her. She ran away and disappeared completely. They searched for an hour and a half before they called us.”
Freyja says the team at Dýrfinn has called out all the volunteers, but a total of about two hundred people came to the search. Half an hour after the call, drones were in the air to search the lava. A total of eight drones were used, three thermal drones, night binoculars, thermal binoculars and quad bikes.
“In the end, she was found in an area that had already been droned over. It was in the industrial district in an area where there were a lot of large machines and rock loads, so the volunteers didn’t want to be out there,” says Freyja.
After six days of searching, a man who owned a commercial vehicle in the area decided to take a drive after his wife encouraged him to do so.
“He takes a look in the car and is driving slowly along a dirt road and hears her whining. He doesn’t see her but he lets his dog loose and he ran straight up to the rock garden.”
Bella, who was still on the leash, had gotten tangled in the rocks and was therefore trapped in a pile of boulders. There were better celebrations and tears when she was finally found.
Freyja says she is very grateful to all those who came to the search. For example, a volunteer’s husband had invited them to stay in a coffee shed near the search area, and two rescue teams took the opportunity to practice using thermal drones.
“When a dog is in need, it’s an amazing community that pulls together.”
