NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – North Shore Rescue says thanks to your generosity, it has covered off the cost of finding a Bernese Mountain dog that had been stranded on Mount Seymour for 12 days.

But the group is still quick to defend itself from critics of the operation.

Not everyone agreed with the move to bring ‘Ohly’ to safety, but Tim Jones with North Shore Rescue says it was a matter of public safety.

“If we had not rescued this dog, someone would have gone down into that area, called Suicide Gully… that’s why it’s called that. They would have gotten themselves in trouble or worse,” he tells us.

“I know there’s people that have their opinions…we have our opinions. This came right down to being a public safety issue. That’s not an opinion. That’s an objective fact,” he adds.

Jones says it cost $9,000 just to keep a helicopter in the air while the search was underway, a cost that has since been covered off by donations.

“We appreciate what everybody has done to help us rescue the dog. We just want to let everybody know that they don’t need to send any more money. We’ve got it fully covered now.”