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Y(h)eeeeelp!
Gisele
This story happened to me, Gisele.
On February 26, 1998, I was watching TV when I heard a dog's yelp. I turned the TV off, and thought that it could be my neighbor's dog — she used to yelp when she was left alone, and bark happily when her people came back home, and my two Basset Hounds, Anton and Hommer, were fast asleep. But, as I wasn't sure of the noise's origin, I went out just to find out that the yelping was coming from the other side of the street. At that point, my mother was already with me, and both of us rushed out — and we saw that a dog had got stuck between the curb and the culvert!
It was dark and, to make things worse, was starting to rain; and, as my mom and I thought (wrongly) that the dog had fallen into the hole, we started desperately to try to pull the dog out of it, what turned out to be quite impossible. By touching its belly, I found out that it was a bitch, and she was carrying puppies! At that point, I was fearing the worst, thinking she would die there, stuck on that hole, in front of me. As for my mom, she thought the opposite — she would fell into the deep, full of (rain) water hole, and drown.
I was acting like an idiot, insisting on pulling the dog and babbling "she can't die like this, she can't!" I really was lost, I didn't know what to do. It was when I remembered those stories of cats on trees saved by firemen. So, what did I do? I rushed inside (no cell phones at that time...) and called the firemen!
Outside, while I was on the phone trying to convince the woman who answered the call that "a dog was about to die an horrible death if the firemen didn't come quickly", my mom got some help from two watchmen from a hospital nearby. One of them soon figured out that, first, the culvert was neither deep nor full of rain water; and that the dog hadn't fall into the hole, but, with her paws resting on a kind of step, she was trying to go out, but got stuck because of the belly full of puppies...*
*What happened was that she had entered a (disconnected) big pipe (for rain water) that ended at the culvert; I believe she was used to do it, however, as she was pregnant, that time she wasn't able to pass through the small space between the curb and the culvert and got stuck.
So, instead of pulling her as I was stupidly doing, my mom and the watchman pushed her back, and, with some difficulty, finally put the sweet dog out of her misery (she was very smart, as soon as my mom and I appeared to rescue her, she stopped yelping). Then, she rested calm and quietly on the step.
The next step was to lift the culvert railing up, to make room for the sweet animal to leave it. It was when that the firemen arrived — YES, they came! — and gave her a little help to go out of the culvert.
She was a pretty and cheerful mutt, wearing an orange, ragged t-shirt. One of the watchman kept her for two days, and people around wanted her puppies; however, one day she went away... maybe back home.
