Dogs to the rescue in Scotland – in pictures

Photographer Murdo MacLeod spent time in the Cairngorms with a search and rescue team whose dogs and volunteer handlers help the police and mountain rescue teams hunt for missing people

Dog Tom, as he is known to his mountain rescue colleagues, has spent close to three decades searching for lost and injured souls across Scotland's most breathtaking and treacherous terrain. But his memory of that first call-out is as clear as unbroken snow.

Tom Gilchrist and his dog, then a Border collie named Orna, were dropped off by helicopter just before dawn on to the Five Sisters of Kintail, an 8km ridge that rises steeply out of Glen Shiel in the north-west Highlands. The sun was rising and the dog just went off, following a scent." The ground they covered was rough and dangerous as the pair searched for a missing hillwalker, who had lost his bearings and hunkered down for the night. Watching a dog work is a joyous thing," says Gilchrist.