After a traumatic two months, a dog who has been abandoned hundreds of feet underground has finally reunited with her family. Early in June, Abby, a 13-year-old senior dog, vanished from her Missouri, US, home, leaving her worried owners to wonder if she had lost forever.
A sick pup was discovered on August 6 by a small group of cavers who were exploring the Berome Moore cave in Perry County. The puppy was trapped 500 feet below the surface. They immediately alerted the local fire department and the members of the Cave Research Foundation before beginning an intricate rescue mission to get her out.
One of the cavers, 66-year-old teacher Rick Haley, noticed Abby and said that she was “not in good shape,” so he set out a duffel bag, opened it, and placed Abby inside “with her head sticking out.”
He explained: “This was to protect her and the rescuers as she would likely struggle.” in a Facebook post.
Rick noticed that Abby was underweight and frail but didn’t appear hurt, so they started planning how to bring her to the surface.
Together with colleague cave diver Gerry Keene, who has had specialized training in cave rescue, they squeezed and wriggled their way through narrow spaces to raise Abby.
The procedure took about an hour, and in the interim, another caveman went door-to-door looking for the lost dog’s owner while carrying a photo of the animal.
Abby had been missing since June 9, so she could have been buried for close to two months. The Bonner family was “shocked” to learn that Abby was still alive.
The cherished dog, albeit a little rattled up, was “happy to be out” and quickly returning to her former self.
Rick told CNN: “I happened to be one of the only people on the surface at the time that the rescue needed to happen. If there had been all 30 of those cavers there, you would have found 30 people facilitating this rescue.”
He claimed that while the exact circumstances of how Abby got so far inside the cave remain unknown, it is possible that she fell into an aperture when following a tiny animal and sank further because of the floods brought by the severe rains.
She’s back in safe hands, and that’s all that matters now.