The fire brigade had been involved in the rescue operation since Tuesday, but two members of the rescue station saved Scooby at about 6.15pm yesterday after arriving at the scene at 1pm.

One of the rescuers, Mines Rescue Station Hunter Valley training coordinator Matt Enright, told ILN Scooby was stuck about 6m into the side of a mountain, in a cavern about 2m in depth.

Two big boulders, each roughly the size of a VW beetle, according to Enright, were the biggest obstacles to rescuing the stranded dog.

Using high-pressure air bags, Enright said they managed to chock the rocks and reposition the bags to slowly move the boulders towards and eventually off the edge of the mountain.

Once within 2m of the cavern, the rescue team had to crack and drill another couple of large rocks to get better access.

Enright said Steve from Henness Contracting saved the operation a lot of strife with his role in cracking and drilling the rocks on the day.

He said the fire brigade did a lot of the footwork for the rescue and were looking at digging the dog out from the bottom, but the mines rescue team did not think it would work.

However, the fire brigade did use a remote camera to get the first images of Scooby out to the world.

Scooby ran off from his 12-year-old owner, Jack Newton, on Sunday.

On Tuesday, the Newton family’s other dog tracked Scooby down by the sound of his whimpering.

Enright said Scooby had gone up into the rocks in the cavern which then dropped down about a metre or so, and when he got in he couldn’t physically make the step up in the cave to get out.

“I’ve never tried to rescue a dog before,” Enright said of the successful rescue.

“Because the mining industry is as dangerous as what it is and has got so many control measures in place, we don’t have a lot of incidents where Mines Rescue gets called so it was good to have a real incident.”

RSPCA spokesperson Michelle Minehan told ILN Scooby was put on a drip overnight and was doing alright, although his eyes were a bit puffy from the dust in the cave.

She said at one stage there seemed to be about 20 different reporters, along with the camera crews coming in and out at different times of the day.

“We haven’t seen anything like it,” she said of the media attention.

“It just shows how much people love dogs and animals.”

When Scooby was rescued, Minehan said, he looked like he did not know what was going on.