Olly the dog saved from Hawke’s Bay floodwaters by animal rescuers

Olly the 11-year-old Labrador took refuge under the bed. Scared and alone with murky floodwaters already swamping the house, he waited for a miracle.

It came in the form of Duncan Tabor and his fellow Animal Evac volunteers.

“We got a tip from the owner that he was there. We got into the house at about 5 o’clock yesterday and there he was in the last room we checked,” said Tabor, one of six volunteers rescuing animals in cyclone-smashed Hawke’s Bay.

“He just came running out from under the bed. He was quite happy to see people after 18 hours on his own.

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“We managed to walk him 2.5km out to our boat then pulled him the rest of the way through the floodwaters.”

His owner, Alan Baldock, had been helicoptered out the day before.

His son, Wellington-based Sam Baldock, said a neighbour Facebook messaged him with news that his father had been winched out of his home on Tuesday, but they were unable to rescue the dog.

Olly the family pet, who he described as “a beacon of happiness and a rather clever dog”, was rescued the following afternoon.

Baldock said his father, an orchardist, was “beside himself”.

He has yet to be reunited with Olly, who was taken to HUHA’s animal shelter set up at the A&P Showgrounds.

Olly’s rescue was one of scores undertake by Animal Evac over the past 48 hours.

Among the more than 60 animals rescued, many in the Pakowhai area, were sheep, goats, horses, cats and dogs.

The animals were in some pretty serious trouble, Tabor said.

On the first day they rescued 30 sheep struggling in floodwaters. Many more weren’t so lucky. They saw up to about 100 dead sheep floating in the fast flowing waters and stuck in fences.

On Wednesday they found a horse stranded in the middle of a road that was more like a fast flowing river, he said.

“It was pretty nervous. We tried to bribe it with apples that were floating down the road and get it into a paddock, but it wouldn’t go.”

“One of our rescuers managed to get a dog lead around it, and we spent 30 minutes trying to figure out what we were going to do with it..”

Eventually they managed to get the horse to higher ground and left it with locals who agreed to look after it.

In Waipawa on Tuesday they rescued two goats and a couple of sheep in a shelter that was almost completely flooded.

“They only had a couple of centimetres of air in there, so we pulled them out,” said Tabor.

“We got lucky getting to them just in time. They were very hypothermic.”

Three other members of the Evac team rescued a pig stuck in a pen in swift rising waters.

Working with Fire and Emergency New Zealand they managed to get to the distressed animal, carrying it through chest deep water and onto a trailer.

“They did have to muzzle it though. It was a 100kg pig, bitey and unco-operative,” he said.

The team carried out the rescues using their inflatable rescue sleds, surf lifesaving boats and in some cases wading through chest deep waters.

“We were working with some of the locals with trailers and ATVs too. Usually we would have to take animals out one or two at a time through the worst of the water or just carry them out, said Tabor, who is also a university student and co-ordinator for the Cancer Society driver service.

Animal Evac New Zealand is a non-profit organisation with specialist swift water rescue teams. All the volunteers have an emergency background. Based in Kāpiti they have been seen huge support from New Zealanders, said Evac board member Julia Vahry.

“We have been inundated with messages asking for help or offering help. It’s been amazing. The amount of offers to help has been incredible, from social media, to accommodation, pastures for animals to graze on and a significant amount of animal feed to be donated and delivered to the affected areas.”

The team, which had working with MPI and police, has been stood down on Thursday now that the Army are coming in to assist, said Vahry.