A dog owner has relived the moment his 15-week-old puppy slipped over the edge of a cliff and was left teetering on a 40 foot drop to a Lizard beach.

Jake Mackintosh is now thanking the team from Mullion Coastguard who descended the cliff edge to bring little Fargo back to safety and into the arms of his “petrified” owner.

Jake, who lives with his partner Hannah Mitchell and her family in the village, had been taking Fargo for a walk towards Lizard Point on Tuesday last week, when disaster struck.

He told the Helston Packet: “We went down a single track, so I let him off just to stretch his legs. I’ve been trying to train him to walk off the lead.

“There’s a stream running down from the meadow and he obviously saw something, a bird or a rabbit because he went haring after it.”

Fargo, a blue merle collie, tore through some bushes at the end, unaware that they back straight onto the cliff face.

“At first I thought he was in the bushes; I was calling and calling. After 30 seconds nothing happened so I scrambled through the undergrowth and looked over the edge and he was maybe 15 foot down, landed on a lip,” said Jake.

Below that ledge, however, was a 40 foot drop to the rocky beach below.

Jake initially thought he could scramble down after Fargo, but the rocks immediately began to crumble under his feet and it was clear he would be unable to get back up again.

He ran back to the path and flagged down a passing couple. The man, who Jake only knows as Simon, stayed with him to keep him company while the woman, Lucy, ran down to one of the cafes at the point to call for help, as none of them had mobile phone signal.

“We just had to stand there and try to reassure Fargo; he got quite upset. He kept walking along the edge and back – I was petrified he would slip. One wrong move and he could go over,” said Jake.

He said that the “worst moment” was when Fargo slipped right to the edge of the overhang, but was able to scramble back up higher. Jake did not see this happen but heard shouts and intakes of breath from the crowd of people that had started to gather below watching, and he added: “I feared the worst, then I saw him scrambling back up. My stomach fell out from underneath me – I thought he was gone.”

It was the job of Richard Haycock, deputy station officer of Mullion Coastguard Team, to abseil over the edge of the cliff and carefully lower Fargo down to the beach, where he was met by two other coastguards in waders as by this time the tide has started to come in.

Richard, from Helston, said: “We always recommend dogs are kept on leads on the coast, but Jake did the right thing calling for help rather than attempting a self-rescue; we have the equipment and the training to safely deal with these situations.”

Fargo was eventually returned to his owner at around 6pm, two hours after he fell.

Jake said: “I tried as much as possible at the time to thank them. If it wasn’t for them he wouldn’t be here. For that I will always be thankful to them.”

It was subsequently found that Fargo had survived his ordeal with only a tiny graze on his leg to show for it.