People who risk their lives to save others are cut from a special bolt of cloth.
Sarah Dean of Athens, Georgia has a better appreciation for rescue services after they saved her dog Yoyo’s life. She had let the boxer mix out of their house on Friday night, but the dog didn’t return as usual. The next day, her daughter was outside when she heard the faint sounds of a dog whimpering in the distance.
“She had a feeling,” Sarah said about the sounds her daughter heard.
When the family checked it out, they discovered that a tree had fallen in the woods and damaged an old well cover. Yoyo had fallen 35 feet into the well, which had about 8 feet of water in the bottom.
No one knows for sure how long the dog had been treading water overnight, but the clock was ticking as far as a rescue was concerned!
Their son quickly dialed 911 around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. The Gwinnett County Fire Department Technical Rescue Team responded and immediately started cutting back brush and trees so that they could get their rescue equipment into the area.
Once they opened the well, they could see the exhausted dog swimming deep down inside.
“You would think a dog couldn’t tread water that long,” said Oconee County Fire Chief Bruce Thaxton. “But when the rescuer went down she said it was treading water and the water was deep.”
“I don’t know how she did it,” Sarah agreed. “She had to swim in the dark.”
Once the team and their equipment was in place, they lowered a rescue worker down into the well to get Yoyo out.
“The woman they sent down in the well was a straight-up superhero,” said the dog’s grateful owner. “The rescue lady said that Yoyo right away leaned on her for help.”
Yoyo weighs about 70 pounds, but the rescuers worked together to get both human and dog out safely. At around 1 in the afternoon, Yoyo’s horrible ordeal was finally over! They took her to the University of Georgia Veterinary Teaching Hospital to be checked out, and she is expected to make a full recovery.
Sarah was left marveling at the bravery of Yoyo’s heroes. They didn’t treat the situation with any less urgency than if it had been a child stuck in the well, and she truly appreciates their efforts to bring Yoyo home.
“They acted like it was as big an emergency as it was to me,” she said.
This poor dog had a really bad night! We’re grateful that this story has a happy ending, and hope the family plans to close up that well to avoid this from happening again.
Share this story to thank all of the brave rescue workers out there.
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