A video of a dog lost in the Wicklow mountains for two weeks being rescued has gone viral.
Ciara Nolan and Jean Francois Bonnet are both doctors who've been working on Ireland's frontline during the Covid-19 pandemic.
They went for a hike on Lugnaquilla close to where they live in Co Wicklow on Saturday.
When they got close to the summit, they found a dog Neesha, who had been lost two weeks previously in the mountains.
The 8-year-old golden retriever was weak, cold and couldn't even bark.
They said: "She was so cold that she couldn't move.
"So we carried her down."
Weather conditions were poor and the couple wrapped the dog in clothes, they also gave her food and started to carry her down the Wicklow mountain.
“We were almost at the top when my girlfriend Ciara screamed ‘there is a dog, there is a dog’. And that poor thing was curled up against the rock,” he told East Coast FM.
“She was petrified and freezing cold.
"She didn’t even have the energy to bark or stand. We tried to get her to walk but she couldn’t stand so we covered her in our spare clothes.
"We gave her some food. Ciara put her on my back, and we started going down the mountain, but it was very icy and rocky, so we fell a few times.”
They took Neesha to their house, fed her and got in touch with an animal rescue group which located her owners.
Speaking on the radio show, owner Erina O’Shea Goetelen said the past two weeks had been “an absolute nightmare”.
She said “They were let off the leash so they could have a bit of freedom, roll around in the snow and explore. They were heading back down, and they said they should put them back on the lead. But a deer popped out and the two of them bolted after the deer.
“My husband and my two kids tried to run after them but they were too fast. Then they lost sight of them towards the forest.”
The family continued home believing that would be where their dog would go.
She added: “At this stage we just couldn’t understand where she was. We even got a drone out.
“We had just about given up hope that day on Saturday and when I got Ciara’s message that she found our golden retriever . . . we were just so, so happy. They were just absolutely amazing. We can’t thank them enough.”
A video of the heartwarming rescue has been watched almost 700,000 times on platforms TikTok and Twitter.
