Labrador Penny hauled from waterfall gorge after ledge rescue in Ingleton

A dog that fell into a river and became stranded on a rocky shelf above the water has been brought to safety by a volunteer mountain rescue team in the Yorkshire Dales. Eight-year-old Labrador Penny was recovered from a narrow ledge at the foot of a 40ft (12m) cliff beside Pecca Falls, near Ingleton, following an operation on Saturday afternoon.

The call was made at around 15:15 BST, when concerns were raised that the pet had gone into the water at one of Yorkshire's best-known waterfall sites. After landing in the river, Penny managed to scramble up onto a rocky outcrop roughly 6.5ft (2m) above the surface, where she remained stuck on a confined ledge with steep rock on either side and a drop to the torrent below.

Yorkshire Dales charity Cave Rescue Organisation (CRO) and North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service attended the incident. Using a rope system, a volunteer was lowered down the rock face to reach the dog. Penny was then hauled back up the gorge in a harness and reunited with her owners on the clifftop, according to the charity.

Support came from the fire service's Ripon swiftwater rescue team, which provided cover downstream from the point where the dog was stranded — a precaution designed to deal with the fast-moving water in the gorge. Images released by the CRO show a rescuer in waterproof clothing and climbing equipment descending the rock face with the light brown Labrador held in his arms, while a second photograph captures emergency vehicles and volunteers in red jackets preparing safety gear on the grass above.

The scale of the falls makes this no small task. Pecca Falls, in Ingleton, is a landmark of the Yorkshire Dales and features a cascade of five falls that drop more than 30m (98ft) in total. The combination of height, wet rock and turbulent water means that reaching a dog — or a person — on a ledge partway down the gorge cannot be done safely without specialist rope and swiftwater capability.

CRO is based in Clapham and covers the Yorkshire Dales National Park, extending its work into Lancashire and Cumbria as well. Formed in 1935, the organisation today has more than 80 volunteers who regularly attend mountain and cave rescues, alongside assisting with other public service incidents. The Ingleton call is one of a long-running catalogue of callouts in which the team has helped reunite animals — and people — with their owners, alongside more widely publicised efforts such as lifting a terrier out of a rabbit hole after two days and freeing a dog trapped underground in a six-hour operation.

It is also a repeat visit to the same waterfall. In March this year, the team used a comparable rope pulley system to rescue a dog that had suffered a fall of 26.2ft (8m) and become stranded on a narrow ledge — a case that bear-eyes similarity to Saturday's. The recurrence underlines how popular the site is with visitors, and with dogs, during good weather, and how often the gorge produces the kind of scenario that rope-rescue volunteers train for.

For the animals involved, the outcome is a fortunate one. A fall into a river that then leaves a dog marooned on an unstable outcrop, with no easy escape route and no access for an owner attempting a direct retrieval, is precisely the situation in which informal well-intentioned attempts can end in injury. The presence of a trained team, backed by a swiftwater unit, allows the dog to be recovered without anyone else being placed at risk.

For the CRO, Saturday's call also illustrates the practical demands on a small volunteer body. Fewer than a hundred people now carry out regular callouts across a national park and neighbouring counties, and each deployment requires kit preparation, rope work and coordination with the fire and rescue service. Volunteer-based mountain rescue in the UK has long relied on the willingness of members to respond at short notice in difficult terrain, and cases such as Penny's are a reminder that the service is often called upon for incidents that are, for a pet's owner, a family emergency.

The BBC reported separately that a woman was taken to hospital after a fall on rocks near a Yorkshire beauty spot, an incident that is not connected to the Ingleton rescue but which underlines the hazards of the country's outdoor attractions at this time of year.

Penny, for her part, ended up where every well-prepared dog should be: back in the hands of her owners, and none the worse for a Saturday that could have gone very differently.