I called in a £4,000 rescue team to search for my late wife’s dog
By Andy Dolan
His late wife chose their pet from a dogs’ home, so Alfie the mongrel has an extra special place in Rod Chivers’s heart. Now, with the eight-year-old dog missing, Mr Chivers is leaving no stone unturned in his search.
The 68-year-old widower has enlisted the help of search and rescue teams, pet detectives and drainage experts to track down his beloved companion since he disappeared on Saturday.
He was prepared to spend almost £4,000 looking for Alfie, who vanished while exploring a badger sett on one of their twice-daily walks.
Mr Chivers, who runs a recycling and scrap metal business in Rugby, Warwickshire, said: ‘It’s just the not knowing that’s the destroying thing.
‘Of course, it’s my wife’s dog and she died three years ago. It’s my lifeline really. I have to find him.’
Mr Chivers spent hours looking for Alfie after he vanished down a badger sett by a disused railway line.
When there was no sign of the black and tan dog, he called in the search and rescue team from West Midlands fire service – expecting to pay £688 an hour.
Their monitoring equipment is designed to detect signs of life among the rubble of earthquakes, collapsed buildings, explosions and landslides
But the seven-man unit spent five hours searching for Alfie without success.
Mr Chivers also paid £180 to drainage experts who spent four hours searching the sett’s 26ft deep tunnels using a CCTV camera, but they drew a blank.
And volunteers from a pet detective service have spent the evenings desperately scouring the area, without any luck.
Mr Chivers, who has three children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, said: ‘It’s a very worrying time and some might say I’m mad to throw so much money at it, but Alfie means more to me and my family than money.’
Much loved: Eight-year-old Alfie was chosen by Rod Chivers late wife from a dogs' home
His late wife, Janet, adopted the dog from a rescue centre but died of lung cancer two years later, aged 68.
The land where Alfie disappeared is managed by conservation association Natural England, which told Mr Chivers he would only be allowed to dig up the sett if he could prove Alfie was trapped underground.
Warwickshire fire service did not have the right equipment, so Mr Chivers was referred to the larger West Midlands brigade.
Though he accepted a quote of £688 an hour, the force said last night that he would not have to pay.
A spokesman added that, while the job fell outside the team’s usual remit, it would waive the charge because there would have been a ‘risk to life if an individual tried to carry out a rescue [of Alfie] themselves’.
Watch manager Rob Norman said: ‘We’ve done as much of a search of that bank as possible. I’m absolutely confident that if Alfie were there... we would have located him.’
Mr Norman believes Alfie, who is microchipped, may have found another way out of the sett and could have been taken in by a nearby resident.
