A dog in Florida is OK after falling 30-feet into a sinkhole and having to wait several hours to be rescued.
The Gainesville Sun reports a 10-year-old pug named Cookie fell into a giant sinkhole that opened after Tuesday’s rains. It took rescuers five hours to dig her free and lift her to safety.
Read more in the Gainesville Sun about the pug rescued by our UF VETS team last night in Gilchrist County. Great… https://t.co/rfNhkDeEqd
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Laurel Johanson, Cookie’s owner, said Cookie had disappeared from sight when the hole, 6 feet in diameter, opened.
“It was beyond belief,” she said.
They called Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Office, which sent the county’s fire rescue to the scene. Cookie snorts instead of barks, Johanson said, and when the sounds of her snorty-snort-snorts reached the humans above ground, they knew she was alive.
“We literally thought she was going to suffocate,” Johanson said.
The Veterinary Emergency Treatment Service at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine was called in and rescued the dog.
An A-frame structure was quickly built above the cavern, and Jennifer Groover, a fourth-year veterinary student, was sent down.
Groover brought a harness for Cookie, but the pug “just kind of scrambled into her lap,” University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine executive director John Haven said. Five hours after Cookie fell, she and Groover were hoisted back up.
“The dog didn’t have a scratch on it,” Haven said. “A little dirt.”