Auckland firefighters to rescue pooch trapped perched on roof

Leo was spotted sitting nonchalantly on the roof of his home by neighbours. Photo / Supplied

Curiosity got the better of Leo the Labrador cross after he jumped out of a two-story window of his owner's Auckland house.

Sitting proud, yet a little bit nervous, on the first-story roof of his Westmere home, Leo looked down, tongue out, as members of the public walked along the footpath of Garnet Rd below.

Leo's escape was news to his owners, who were out at the time, Grey Lynn Station Officer Shane Olsen told the Herald.

They turned up 10 minutes after his recovery, oblivious to the drama that had just unfolded.

A member of the public called firefighters about Leo's plight after spying him sitting nonchalantly on the roof about 11.20am.

"Leo the escaping Lab cross, he was a lovely dog. He decided to escape from the top floor, second level, outer window and onto a flat roof.

"At that stage, he decided that it wasn't such a good idea and everyone was walking past ... so he was watching all his mates walk past and decided it wasn't a good idea but he couldn't get back in the window."

Grey Lynn firefighters set the ladder up to go and retrieve Leo. He was eventually put back through the window that he escaped out of. Photo / Supplied

Olsen said the window was too high for him to jump back in but then he began to get nervous about how to get down.

"It was too high. He was so frightened that when the firefighters got up to bring him down, we ended up popping him back through the window, deciding it was going to be a lot easier."

Unsure what was happening, Leo basically turned into a "dead weight", scared about the prospect of being carried down the ladder, so he was put back through the window.

"We unscrewed the safety latch on the upstairs window and popped him back in."

A neighbour then called the owners who arrived soon after.

"His owners arrived about 10 minutes later and they were very thankful."

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting on the roof but it was at least half an hour.

"Some people had driven past for half an hour or even more and thought that it was his spot that he could out onto."

Olsen said fire crews were regularly called to rescue animals caught up in all sorts of predicaments.

Olsen was part of the fire crew called to free a kitten who became trapped in the wall of its owner's pantry cabinet on Sunday.

"It poked his head through the back of a pantry and we had to cut a hole big enough to get the kitten back through again."

He said he would hear of at least one or two animal rescues a day from various stations around Auckland.

Figures supplied to the Herald from 2016 to the end of 2017 showed there were 889 animal rescue callouts.

Of those, 435 were for cats, 212 for dogs, 77 for horses, 55 for birds, 42 for ducks, 24 for cows, and 39 were categorised as unknown.

Most - 324 - were in Auckland, followed by Christchurch at 89, and Wellington with 31.