PORT ANGELES — An aged dog belonging to acclaimed poet Tess Gallagher was reunited with its mistress after a harrowing few hours down a Strait of Juan de Fuca bluff.
Husie, who is partially blind and about 11 years old, was let outside in the backyard of the Gallagher home on East Bay Street in an unincorporated area east of downtown Port Angeles late Sunday.
Husie fell through thick brush at the edge of the bluff and fell about 300 feet down the cliff. The dog could be heard barking occasionally in vegetation somewhere between the Gallagher yard and the Olympic Discovery Trail at the bluff’s toe.
Search and Rescue volunteer Kelly Thomas was lowered on a rope by the team led by Search and Rescue coordinator Sgt. Lyman Moores of the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.
A shaken and dirty Husie, apparently unhurt, was pulled along with Thomas back to the top of the bluff, where the dog was happily reunited with Gallagher, who had the dog checked by a veterinarian.
Gallagher is the widow of the late acclaimed author Raymond Carver, who is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles.
She was acknowledged at last February’s Academy Awards ceremony by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of “Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” which won Best Picture and six other Oscars.
The film opens with a Carver poem and then wends its way through one of his stories about love based on his story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”
Carver, 50, died of lung cancer in Port Angeles in 1988.
Gallagher, the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts awards among other honors, has published many works in addition to being a former lecturer at several universities.
