For three days, he assumed the faint barking was just a neighbor’s dog. Then he put his ear to his floor and realized the cries were coming from directly beneath his feet.
A man renting a duplex in Longview, Texas, kept hearing a distant whine somewhere outside. He ignored it at first. It wasn’t his dog. It wasn’t his problem. But the sound never stopped. For three straight days, the muffled barks and whimpers continued, growing weaker each time.
Finally, something made him look down. He pressed his ear to the floorboards, and his stomach dropped. The sound wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from below.
He called animal control immediately. Officer Bobby Jumper arrived and crawled into the dark crawl space beneath the house with only a flashlight. He followed the faint cries until he found something the renter never knew existed: a 12 foot deep well, hidden in the darkness under the home. At the very bottom, staring up with terrified eyes, was a dog.
The moment the dog saw Jumper’s face appear over the edge, he stopped barking. His tail started wagging.
“He was about as happy as could be to see me,” Jumper said.
Eight rescuers from the fire department and animal shelter rushed to the scene. For three grueling hours, they worked in the cramped, dark space, rigging makeshift slings to lift the trapped animal. At one point, they nearly ripped up the floorboards when extraction seemed impossible.
Finally, the dog came up. Unscathed.
When the firefighters got a good look at him, they laughed. He had looked so tall down in that dark hole. But up close, he was just a short, stocky little Basset Hound mix, only 53 pounds, wagging his tail like he had just won the lottery.
They named him Timmy, after the boy who always fell down the well on Lassie.
He had an inflamed ear and a few cuts, but he was alive. Three days trapped in the dark, no food, no water, barking until his voice nearly gave out.
Someone saw his story on Facebook and adopted him three days later. The little dog who refused to stop crying for help finally has a home where someone will always hear him.
(Photo: Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center)
