Look Ma! I'm on top of the woild!

[Stinky The Clown]

(Apologies to James Cagney for stealing his iconic line from 1949's White Heat.)

Rupee the Rescue climbs to the top of Mt Everest with his rescuer, Joanne Lefson.



Many more pictures of this clearly happy dog, and the story, at this link to The Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502652/Former-stray-Rupee-dog-climb-Mount-Everest.html

I just LOVE stories like this. Go Doggie!!!

[TorchTheWitch]

1. He didn't go to the summit, thank the gods

He only went to base camp. Everest is a truly punishing climb, and it would be cruel to make a dog struggle up to the summit. Not just cruel but crazy. I still don't understand why so many people put themselves through that and at such a high risk.

Did you ever read Into Thin Air? It's a great true story by Jon Krakauer about the disastrous Everest climb of 1996. More horrible stuff in there than I'd ever want to know about climbing that mountain. I have no idea why people actually want to put themselves through that nightmare. The mountain is littered with bodies including those of very experienced climbers. They're just left there since it's far too dangerous to risk lives in getting them down or even buried in a crevasse. Some of them climbers have to walk right passed or even step over. I made the horrible mistake once of actually looking at photos of some of those dead bodies. I'll never get those ghastly images out of my head. Some things you just can't scrub out of your brain however much you want to.

Rupee has such incredibly soulful eyes. You just can't possibly look in those eyes and not feel your heart just melt.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. You know . . . that story detail is unclear to me.

On the one hand, it says he went to the base camp. But every story I read simply says he "climbed Mt. Everest" so I'm not certain.

[TorchTheWitch]

5. There's a lot of parts past base camp that would just be physically impossible

for the dog to climb. The Sherpa guides have to go ahead beforehand to fix ropes, secure ice covered frozen ladders across crevasses that people have to crawl across, they'd have to get through the Khumbu Ice Falls which is a death trap of constantly shifting and falling ice towers as well, and past base camp everything is ice unless there was recent snowfall, so you have to wear crampons (boot soles made up of steel spikes that are strapped onto the soles of your boots). The temperatures past base camp the higher you go are terrifyingly cold, the wind alone can blow you right off the mountain, and you have to acclimate to the high altitude by repeatedly going farther up to each camp (there's four before the summit) and back down again. And pretty much nobody goes past the last two camps without oxygen tanks though plenty of people still get HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) or HACE (high altitude cerebral edema). There's extremely little oxygen that high up. You dehydrate like crazy, and with the high altitude it takes about an hour to melt enough ice to make just one cup of water. It just isn't possible that a dog could do this and certainly not without doggie crampons, doggie oxygen mask, doggie deep cold clothing, and actual technical climbing skill and equipment that a dog certainly doesn't have. Though not that much of Everest is technical climbing there are several sections that are.

You should check out one of the many documentaries on YouTube about climbing Everest. It's fascinating yet terrifying. I will just never understand why in the world people punish themselves trying to get to the top and what extreme risk is involved. Your eyes would pop out at the price tag, too! Gah! Where in the world do people get that kind of money? I don't know but extreme mountaineering like THAT seems to me a person's just got to have a couple of loose screws to even WANT to do it.

I definitely recommend reading Into Thin Air. It's the single book I ever read that I just could not put down and read cover to cover in one go. Gripping and exciting yet horrible and tragic.

[Skittles]

4. I read that book - riveting and heartbreaking

I too do not understand what drives people to do such crazy things but I concede that life would be very boring if no one ever did crazy things

[Skittles]

3. omg that dog is gorgeous!

and that gal is just lovely

[IrishAyes]

6. So do I. Thanks for sharing.