A DOG owner from Rhu saw his pet have a lucky escape after she picked up a fishing hook and line in her mouth while walking along the beach.

Mike D'Arcy was walking his one-year-old whippet/lurcher cross Jess on the beach at Blairvadach last Wednesday evening when Jess encountered the discarded fishing gear.

Mike said: “We were walking near the slip at the outdoor centre at Blairvadach – that's one place I know I can let Jess off the lead because it's away from the road.

“She has a penchant for picking up anything off the ground. She loves dead mussel shells and other things like that, and she was racing around as usual when I noticed the fishing line streaming from her mouth.

“I realised right away what had happened – she'd picked up a hook with some bait on it and had the hook in her mouth.

“Luckily it wasn't hooked on to the inside of her mouth but I didn't know that at the time.

“She didn't come to me very readily – I had to cajole her to come to me.

“By good fortune she hadn't swallowed the hook, but things could have been pretty dire if she had. It could have killed her.”

Mr D'Arcy said discarded fishing gear was becoming an increasingly common discovery on the shore around Rhu – and warned that the next animal to pick up a thrown-away piece of bait on a hook might not be as fortunate as Jess.

“We're finding it all over the place,” he continued, “especially at this time of year when sea trout are beginning to run.

“I'm a former commercial fisherman, and I've fished off and on for all my life, so I know not to leave things like that behind. People need to have some respect for the environment.

“If it hadn't been my dog who picked it up it could have been a fox, or a gull, or an oystercatcher.

“I think it's probably been a teenager who has done it. It was definitely freshly discarded – it wasn't stinking as it would be if it had been left there for a while.”

Mike and his partner gave Jess a home in November after she spent five months in the SSPCA's rescue centre in Cardonald in Glasgow.

Jess's back left leg had to be amputated by SSPCA staff last year after it was broken when she was four months old and her previous owners couldn't afford the cost of her treatment.

Mr D'Arcy said the nearest bin to the place Jess found the discarded line, hook and bait was “a couple of hundred yards” away – but said he doubted whether additional bins would make a difference.

“Jess hasn't had much of a puppyhood,” he continued, “and so now that she's finally fit and free she's exploring everything.

“We use the slip at Blairvadach quite often, and we've come across quite a few teenagers fishing in the area and just leaving their line on the shore.

“Would it make a difference if there was a bin on the slip? I don't think so.

“I and my partner have both noticed an increase in litter in the area – we've been here almost seven years, and there's been a great increase in litter in that time.

“Just about every day I'm lifting an empty drinks can or a bottle and taking it to the nearest bin.”