Rescuer dog survives 16 days on the Matterhorn glaciers

It survived 16 days wandering over 3,500 meters on the glaciers of the Matterhorn group, without food, with temperatures down to -25 degrees. Malice is a seven-year-old Belgian shepherd Malinois who specializes in finding people above and below avalanches. "It is skin and bones. It will take two weeks to recover, it has lost all its muscle tone. But it is back," its conductor, Lucio Trucco, mountain guide, mountain rescue technician from Valle d'Aosta and manager of the Guide refuge told ANSA. of the Matterhorn (3,480 meters). Right from here, from the Plateau Rosa, Malice had left on January 12th. "It had never happened, it will have followed some particular odor. We searched for it for ten days, even with a helicopter and drone. We thought it was inside a crevasse or otherwise blocked. Two weeks later I said 'or went down to Zermatt, on the Swiss side , and someone keeps it in an apartment, or I fear the worst. '" Instead "last night she returned, perhaps sensing the arrival of bad weather, like the wild".

"She made me parties," recalls Trucco, with whom Malice grew up, but she was without energy. Now we have to feed her a little at a time, to avoid the risk of a stomach twist. " It never went downstream according to its conductor: "It will have been at an altitude between 3,500 and 3,800 meters.

Otherwise it would have got dirty and smelled wild. Instead it has only a few cuts on the muzzle and legs, but nothing serious ".