Dogged devotion: Dachsund found six days after deadly ATV crash
<p>Rob Reed of Spirit Lake holds Daisy, Tom McTevia’s dog that was found Saturday near the site where McTevia died when his ATV rolled off a cliff. Reed’s son, Logan, 15, looks on.</p>
<p>Tom McTevia’s friends and relatives climbed down the cliff where McTevia died last week to find his dog, Daisy. Pictured from left: Jaylen Reed, Troy Thompson, Rob Reed, Ryan McTevia and Chris Bess.</p>
<p>Tom McTevia holds his dog, Daisy. McTevia died a week ago when his ATV rolled off a steep cliff in Bonner County. The dog was with him at the time and was found uninjured Saturday, six days after the crash.</p>
As the people closest to Tom McTevia spent the last week grieving his loss, they also worried what had become of his dog, Daisy.
The little dachshund was with McTevia and his friend, Tina Hoisington, a week ago, when the ATV they were riding rolled off a steep cliff in the mountains overlooking Lake Pend Oreille, killing them both.
No one had seen the dog since.
"We knew she was out there; we just didn't know if she was dead or alive," said McTevia's sister, Laura Bess.
On Saturday, six days after the crash, five men - McTevia's friends and family members - used ropes to scour the rugged terrain below the cliff the ATV had plummeted from.
Others waited at the top, communicating with the searchers below by two-way radio.
Between check-ins with the searchers, the group at the top of the cliff chatted and reminisced about McTevia.
"All of a sudden, from the radio we heard, 'We found the dog,'" said Tonya Reed of Spirit Lake, whose husband Rob Reed was one of the searchers below. "It gave me chills."
Tonya, a friend of McTevia's since sixth grade, said the chatting came to a quick stop as another report came through the two-way radio: "We found the dog and she's alive."
"We celebrated. We all bawled," Tonya said.
McTevia's son, Ryan, 18, was the one who found the dog.
Laura, McTevia's sister, said her nephew told her he was able to spot Daisy when he remembered what his father taught him when they went hunting and were looking for game: "Look for the shapes."
The little dog was hunkered down in a little hole about 800 feet down the cliff from the road.
They wrapped Daisy in a blanket and brought her to a veterinarian who determined she had not suffered any injuries from the crash and had not developed any health problems from her six days alone in the wilderness.
Tonya Reed said the hike down the cliff was grueling for the searchers. She said her husband Rob, a close friend of McTevia's, was feeling sore Saturday night. Rob and others had gone down the cliff earlier in the week also.
"My husband wasn't going to rest until he got down to the Razor (Polaris ATV)," Tonya said. "He wanted to make sure we recovered all of Tom's things that we could."
Dena Hankins, a close friend of McTevia's who lives in Coeur d'Alene, was overjoyed when she heard his little dog had been found.
"To have this little bit of hope, and something to hang on to, to cheer for and love the way that he would have, that is just golden," Hankins said.