The smell of bacon didn’t work.
Calling her name didn’t, either.
So Concord firefighters thought outside the box Tuesday morning, using an air hose to startle Zoey – a St. Bernard mix – from behind to guide her through a 25-foot long culvert and into an open catch basin six feet deep underground.
There, a familiar face, her owner was waiting – with love and a leash.
“It involved the spirit of who we are,” said Concord Fire Department Batallion Chief Jeff Stone. “When someone cannot figure out how to take care of something, they call us and we figure it out.”
Stone said animal rescues are part of the job. A big part, in fact. The ever-popular cats in trees. Animals on ice. Ducklings in storm drains.
But this? A dog down low, in a tight space, out of sight?
“It’s all part of what we do,” Stone said. “But we haven’t had a dog this far into a drainage system in recent memory.”
Everyone likes a good animal tale. Especially the ones with a happy ending. This rescue took about 90 minutes, after the owner of Aranco Oil had phoned the fire department Tuesday morning.
He had heard a dog barking.
From where, he didn’t know.
It turns out that Zoey had been on the loose for 10 days. Her owners – who were unavailable for comment Wednesday – had posted a plea for help. Hope was dwindling.
When firefighters and other rescue personnel arrived at the sight – on North State Street near Sewalls Falls and Fisherville Roads – they were confident they’d get the job done.
“We adore dogs,” said Stone, owner of a 15-year-old beagle named Chiri. “And there was no question we were getting this dog out.”
In this case, the barking indicated a dog was nearby. It turned the dog was not going to respond to a strange voice. Firefighters would have to work at it and get creative to solve a problem that was nowhere to be found in the training manual.
Members of Engine 5, at the Manor Station, brought leftovers from breakfast. They were sure that bacon would do the trick.
Firefighters Ryan Baron and Jim Pratt descended into the catch basin. They used a flashlight to see down the long tunnel leading to the other catch basin, a narrow passageway far too small for a firefighter to squeeze through.
They spotted Zoey, frightened, disoriented and stuck in a culvert at least 25 to 30 feet from rescuers and their bacon. At that moment, the firefighters at the bottom of the catch basin recognized that this was the missing dog that had escaped from her home.
Now they had a name as well as bacon.
Neither worked.
“That would have gotten me out of there, I can tell you that,” Stone said, referring to the bacon. “But Zoey was skittish, very skittish. A person who’s trapped would move toward the light, but a dog will not do that. The dog doesn’t know if you are a friend or foe. We had to change tactics because we were after something that simply did not want to be rescued.”
Finally, after meeting and brainstorming ways to rescue Zoey, someone had an idea. Firefighters could dig below a rock they had found. They could insert an air hose and bring it to rest behind Zoey.
Then, the theory went, Zoey would try to escape from this unknown force that was behind her.
And that’s exactly what happened.
“She had dug in there deep,” Stone said. “She was not interested in leaving, and then the hose behind her irritated her enough to come out rather than have a hose blowing at her butt.”
Zoey crawled to the light. She poked her head from the culvert, into the catch basin. Her owner was were there, waiting. Zoey began to recognize the life she used to live.
She bent her head slightly, allowing the leash to circle her neck. She was free.
She wagged her tail.
She had learned her lesson.
“No one had any doubt that we would pull her out of there,” Stone said. “The owner touched base with us later in the day. She said Zoey had not left her side all day long.”