Snowmobilers rescue puppies from remote Utah mountaintop

WEST HAVEN, Utah (KSTU) – Three adorable puppies are recovering after snowmobilers rescued them from the wilderness.

The Great Pyrenees were wet, cold, and hungry when they were found on a Utah mountaintop.

Kat Perry and Corey Holt were snowmobiling on Monte Cristo, miles into the back country, when Kat spotted a dog. She just couldn’t let it go. “I’m not going to leave any animal on the mountain to starve,” Kat explained. “Especially, it was obvious she had pups.”

Cell phone video shows Kat hand-feeding the mother five miles from the closest paved road. “Everything just fell right into place except for rescuing the mom,” she said.

Weber County Search and Rescue just happened to be in the area and helped bring the puppies off the mountain. Their mother, too wild to trust her rescuers, was left with 20 pounds of dog food.

Corey said, “We didn’t have a leash. We didn’t have a rope or anything so we decided the best thing was get these guys out first and then go back in and try to get her.”

Investigators believe the mother was protecting a flock of sheep on the mountain over the summer, typical for the Great Pyrenees breed. When the rancher went to collect the herd, she had gone off to have the litter.

Kat said, “They were living in a sheep carcass. She had found a dead sheep and they had eaten, there was nothing left, just a little bit of wool and a few big bones. I’m sure that’s what she’d been eating on all fall.”

Two boys and a girl survived, likely from a much larger litter.

“The pups were cold, shivering and wet and just a little ball of ice,” Kat said.

Now, the couple is considering keeping one of the pups they’ve named “Polar” as volunteers search for their mother.

The puppies will be adopted out through a Great Pyrenees rescue group out of Montana.

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