San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
DOG RESCUED AFTER 2 MONTHS UNDERGROUND
Man on caving excursion spots pup, recruits help
Gerry Keene was 500 feet underground on a cave exploration adventure in Missouri when his headlamp shone on something he’d never seen this deep in a cave: a dog.
She was skinny with matted fur and had curled up on a slab of cold rock, too weak to wag her tail or whimper. There was no telling how long she had been stuck down there.
“We realized it would be hard to get her out because she was too weak to walk,” said Keene, 59, who was on a spelunking trip in Perryville, Mo., on Aug. 6.
He snapped a photo of the dog, then headed out of the cave to call for help.
At the same time as an assistant fire chief arrived, Rick Haley, 66, a caving enthusiast who happened to be nearby, overheard that a dog was found inside the cave and needed rescuing. He volunteered to venture back into the darkness with Keene and help bring out the pup.
Before Keene went back into the cave with Haley, he showed the photo of the dog to residents who lived nearby. One of them recognized her as Abby, a neighbor’s mixed-breed poodle who had gone missing June 9.
Knowing that someone was looking for her gave them even more motivation to go back in and get her.
They walked and crawled for about 15 minutes until they reached Abby, but it took them more than an hour to carefully haul her through low and narrow tunnels to the surface in a padded duffel bag, Haley said. The exhausted pooch’s head poked out of the top.
The cave tunnel system is about 22 miles, one of the longest in Missouri.
Abby was quiet and relaxed as they moved her through the tight spaces, perhaps because she knew she was being rescued, Haley said.
“She was also extremely weak and emaciated from lack of food,” he said. “She did have water in the cave. If not for that, she wouldn’t be here.”
When the pair surfaced with Abby, her owner, Jeff Bohnert, 55, who had been alerted by a neighbor, rushed over to bring her home.
He was flabbergasted to learn that his adventurous dog had been found 500 feet underground, two months after she went missing.
“I was absolutely astonished that she was still alive,” he said, noting that the cave is about two miles from his house. “She’s a real survivor.”
He and his wife gave Abby a bath, and they made a large batch of chicken broth to feed to her in small amounts.
Abby is now able to take short walks on a leash, and she seems happy to be reunited with her family, he said.