A Highland hillwalking dog has become one of an elite band to have bagged all 283 Munros.

Kerry the six-year-old boxer completed the feat at the weekend along with her proud owner - retired policeman Peter Sinclair.

The pair have completed the feat in just four years - around half the time it usually takes.

During their push they have bagged seven peaks in one day as well as surviving a snowstorm. When climbing the most difficult Munro, Sgurr Dearg on Skye (known as the Inaccessible Pinnacle) Kerry was strapped into a special harness.

Peter, 56, from Inverness, said: “For every Munro I do, she does about four times as much, running up and down and chasing things.

“I understand from the Munro Society that she’ll be the fourth or fifth dog to have climbed them all, so she’s following industrious company and I’m very proud of her.

The pair bagged their first Munro on August 29, 2005, on Meall a’ Chrasgaidh and reached the top of their last, Sgurr na Ciste Duibhe, at 2.30pm on Saturday.

However, among all the ups, Peter confessed their have been some downs.

He said: “The scariest one we ever had was a relatively easy hill where the conditions changed. At Scorguie and Glenfeshie, I ended up close to the big cliff at the summit in whiteout conditions so we had to hunker down for 40 minutes until it lifted.”

Peter started hillwalking during his career with Northern Constabulary but only after retiring did he set himself the challenge of climbing some of the world’s highest mountains.

He has already scaled the 19,331ft Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and in January he will fly to Argentina to tackle South America’s highest peak, Aconcagua – although this will be without his four-legged companion.

Peter celebrated bagging his final Munro by cracking open a bottle of single malt and a steak for Kerry.

Hamish Brown is believed to have been the first person to climb the Munros with his pet dogs, Kitchy and then Storm.

A Munro is a Scottish mountain measuring at or over 3,000ft. In September, the mountain Sgurr nan Ceannaichean, south of Glen Carron, was demoted to a Corbett after officially being officially measured at 2996.8 ft. The re-classification reduced the number of Munros from 284 to 283.