After three days on a ledge, and two at the vet, Elbie is just fine. For her owner, it’s a different story

After three days stuck on a ledge 13 storeys high, and a two-night stay at the vet, rescued Jack Russell Elbie has happily reunited with her buddy, six-year-old staffy Noi, “like she never left”.

“Yeah, they were playing together as soon as she was home,” owner Jake, 18, told the Herald on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after the two-year-old was discharged.

While Elbie has bounced back to her bubbly, social self, for Jake, the ordeal may take a little longer to get over.

“It’s been pretty stressful, yeah,” Jake said.

Elbie went missing on Saturday night, while the teenager was home alone and his father was overseas in Thailand, having given his son strict instructions on how to look after their two dogs.

“I get a call on that day, that evening, with Jake panicking, saying, ‘We’ve lost Elbie. She’s not here’,” said dad Alex.

The Dobrins live in a 13th-floor apartment, so they couldn’t work out how Elbie had escaped. And yet, there was no trace of the dog.

Early on Monday, a neighbour in a nearby apartment block got in touch with Alex to tell him she had spotted a black and white flash of fur trapped between the window and the ledge of the building.

Elbie appears to have escaped by squeezing through pot plants and climbing through to a neighbour’s ledge. Rescue teams later said Elbie had walked halfway around the building – about 45 metres above the ground – on a ledge just 10 centimetres wide.

It took three rescue teams, and several hours, to safely retrieve Elbie from her precarious position.

Jake said he has since blocked off the spaces Elbie slipped through on Saturday.

“I’ve done a very DIY job at the moment … But we’ll put in something more permanent when my dad gets back.

“I’m just waiting on him to get back now. He gets back at the end of this week.”

Emily Pratten, a vet at Collaroy Veterinary Hospital, was on shift when Jake brought in a shaken-up Elbie at about 5pm on Monday afternoon.

“She was quite dehydrated, but otherwise her vitals seemed pretty OK, so she’s actually in pretty good shape, all things considering,” Pratten said.

The team kept Elbie at the vet for about 36 hours, mostly as a precaution, while they monitored her condition. They were looking for signs of muscle damage because of the position she had been wedged in for multiple days.

Pratten said Elbie had made a quick recovery, and Jake said she was back to her old self when she left the vet on Wednesday.

“She walked out those doors a much happier pup,” Jake said.

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