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Joe Tagg was 86 years old when he set off with his sheepdog Tip to tend sheep in the Upper Derwent valley on the icy cold day of Saturday 12 December 1953. By the next morning ‘Old Joe’ and Tip had failed to return home and RAF mountain rescue, gamekeepers and shepherds went out to search for them. It was not until Saturday 27 March 1954 that they were found by two Water Board men rounding up sheep high on Ronksley Moor. It had been fifteen weeks since their disappearance when the frozen corpse of ‘Old Joe’ was found lying in a dip with a very weak Tip only a few feet away. The eleven-year-old Tip had survived 105 days near her master’s body through one of Derbyshire’s harshest winters. Tip was taken home, nursed back to recovery by Joe’s niece and was presented with the Bronze Medal of the Canine Defence League, equivalent to the Victoria Cross of the animal world.