Missing dog rescued from sinkhole

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - A missing dog was returned to its owners after being rescued from a sinkhole.

It all started two weeks ago when Angela and Bruce McCormick realized their dog, Chewy, hadn’t come back from his usual run.

“When he didn’t come home that day, we knew something was wrong,” Bruce McCormick said.

It wasn’t until this weekend, when their neighbor was having a sinkhole filled, that Chewy was found 30 feet at the bottom of it.

“I was like, there’s no way. So I had him show me the sinkhole,” Bruce McCormick said. “He shined a light down there and sure enough, it was my dog.”

The Horse Cave Fire Department was quickly notified, though they realized it would take more than just the equipment at the station to save Chewy.

“We found that the dog was probably 30 feet down inside the hole, had some pretty good angles and turns to get down to it,” said Horse Cave Fire Chief, Adam Sloan. “We have one guy that’s on our fire department, Jason Poole, that does a lot of cave exploring and things of that nature. So I made a call to him to get him in route up here”

“I got down into the bottom of the pit, which was about 30 feet deep. It was a pretty tight entrance, not much larger than the diameter of my body,” Poole said. “After getting down in there, the puppy actually approached me wanting help and you could tell he was suffering from malnutrition at that point. So put him in a full body sling system and they raised him out.”

After a lengthy rescue, and a trip to the vet, Chewy is back with his family.

“He’s recovering quick. We had to monitor his water intake and his food intake because we didn’t know how long he had been without both, so we didn’t want him to overdo it and get sick,” Bruce McCormick said. “But he’s on a full feeding schedule now and drinks whenever he wants now. He’s coming along and his personality’s a little skewed from before he got lost, but it’s slowly coming back to.”

The McCormicks are grateful to have Chewy back, but even more grateful for the first responders who helped in getting him there.

“That’s the other miracle, is the turnout to help a little dog. Horse Caves Fire Department, I think we counted over 30 people that showed up to help,” Bruce McCormick said. “God was watching over us and our dog.”

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