But now, like her proud owner, boxer dog Kerry is an official Munro “compleatist”. The six-year-old became one of only a handful of dogs to bag all 283 Munros when she climbed her last peak with owner Peter Sinclair by her side on Saturday.

Over four years, the retired policeman and his faithful pet enjoyed adventures including scaling seven Munros in a day, being caught in a blinding snowstorm, and climbing the most difficult peak, Sgurr Dearg on Skye, dubbed the Inaccessible Pinnacle. Kerry made the rock-climb strapped into a special harness.

Mr Sinclair, 56, from Inverness, said the boxer took it all in her four-legged stride without so much as a whimper, and Kerry’s vet says she is one of the fittest dogs he has ever seen.

The pair began their epic together on August 29, 2005, on Meall a’ Chrasgaidh and reached the top of their last, Sgurr na Ciste Duibhe, at 2.30pm on Saturday, completing all 283 inhalf the eight years it usually takes.

Mr Sinclair, from Inverness, said: “I was elated. I was proud to do it myself but it means a lot more to have had my dog with me.

“Most of the Munros are quite straightforward but there are some where she had to be strapped into a special harness.

“She has two harnesses, one for climbing ridges and one that is used by search and rescue dogs to pull her up a hill.

“My proudest moment was after climbing the Inn Pinn on Skye with two friends and I realised she could do them all. That’s a beast. I was climbing on one rope and Kerry was on the other in a harness being pulled up by a friend.

“She was docile throughout. If she had shown any sort of distress at any point I would have stopped.

“There were some moments when I thought, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and I’m sure she thought it too.”

The pair got caught in a whiteout on Sgor Gaoith in the Cairngorms and had to sit for 40 minutes in a survival bag, but Mr Sinclair said they remained quite calm.

He started hillwalking during his career with the Northern Constabulary but it was only when he retired that he set himself the challenge of climbing some of the world’s highest mountains.

He already has the 19,341ft Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa’s highest mountain, under his belt. In January he will fly to Argentina to scale the South America’s highest peak, Aconcagua – although this will be without Kerry.

He said: “I have been climbing for a long time but I was never a Munro bagger. I just enjoyed the hills for the hills’ sake. When I realised I had got more than halfway on the list I just decided to keep going. I’m now in the lovely ­position where I can go back and ­cherry-pick the ones I want to do again.

“Thousands of people have done this but for a dog to do it is quite something.”

The Reverend A E Robertson is believed to have been the first to complete all the Munros, Scottish mountains over 3000ft, in 1901.

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

In July 1974, he became the first to complete the journey in one trip with only ferries and a bicycle as means of transport, and later wrote about his adventure in ­Hamish’s Mountain Walk, the book credited with kick-starting the popularity of Munro-bagging as a hobby. Charlie Campbell, a former postman from Glasgow, holds the current record for the fastest round of the Munros.

He completed the round in 48 days 12 hours, finishing on July 16, 2000, on Ben Hope.

In September, it was announced that the mountain Sgurr nan Ceannaichean, south of Glen Carron, has a height of 913.43 metres (2996.8 ft).

As a result of the re-surveys the Scottish Mountaineering Club removed its Munro status and it is now a Corbett.