BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) — It all started two weeks ago when Angela and Bruce McCormick realized their dog Chewy hadn’t returned from his usual run.
“When he didn’t come home that day, we knew something was wrong,” Bruce McCormick said.
It wasn’t until the weekend, when their neighbor was having a sinkhole filled, that Chewy was found.
30 feet to the bottom of it.
“I was like, there’s no way. So I asked him to show me the chasm,” McCormick said. “He turned on a light there and of course it was my dog.”
The Horse Cave Fire Department was quickly notified, although they realized it would take more than the station’s equipment to save Chewy.
“We found that the dog was probably 30 feet inside the hole, had very good angles and turns to get there,” said fire chief Adam Sloan. “We have a guy in our fire department, Jason Poole, who does a lot of cave exploration and things of that nature. So I phoned him to get him started here.
“I went down to the bottom of the pit, which was about 30 feet deep. It was a pretty narrow entrance, not much bigger than the diameter of my body,” Poole said. “After going down there the pup approached me asking for help and you could tell he was malnourished at the time. So put it in a full wrap system and they’ve got it up.
After a long rescue and a trip to the vet, Chewy is back with his family.
“He is recovering quickly. We had to monitor his water intake and his food intake because we didn’t know how long he had been without both, so we didn’t want him to overdo it and get sick,” McCormick said. “But he’s on a full diet now and drinks when he wants now. He’s coming in and his personality is a bit skewed from before he got lost, but it’s slowly coming back.
The McCormicks are grateful to have Chewy back, but even more grateful for the first responders who helped get him there.
“It’s the other miracle, it’s the participation to help a little dog. Horse Caves Fire Department, I think we had over 30 people who showed up to help,” McCormick said. “God was watching over us and our dog.”
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