A 13-hour miracle: Tiny puppies rescued from George drainpipe

Three six-day-old puppies were reunited with their mother on March 4 following a 13-hour rescue operation in Pacaltsdorp, George in the Western Cape. The puppies had wandered into an open drainpipe prompting a joint recovery effort between the Garden Route SPCA (GRSPCA) and the George Municipality.

It could’ve ended very differently for Lady the crossbreed and her tiny puppies if the local SPCA didn’t have the most dedicated members, reports George Herald.

“We knew Lady was going to give birth soon, and my son, Faizel, got some pallets from a neighbour to build her a shelter, but before he could finish it, she gave birth to her five puppies,” said Diena Esau, the woman in whose yard the dog had given birth. 

“He then made a makeshift shelter from the pallets against the wall and put some old clothes on the ground for them to lie on. The pipe is quite far from where the shelter was, but the puppies managed to find their way into it after Lady had moved them. Lady is at my house often as she belongs to my son’s girlfriend who lives across the road.”

According to the Garden Route SPCA’s (GRSPCA) branch manager, Sue Noakes, the puppies had fallen into the open pipe at about 23:45 on Tuesday night.

A neighbour of the dog’s owner contacted the GRSPCA at about 05:00 the next morning. Inspector Henrico Pypers was first on the scene and remained there as more SPCA staff arrived to assist.

The rescuers could hear the puppies crying from deep inside while their distressed mother paced anxiously aboveground. She repeatedly tried to dig for her babies and had to be held back to prevent her from hurting herself.

The GRSPCA contacted George Municipality, and municipal workers soon arrived with the tools needed to break through the brick wall and start digging towards the pipe.

After digging a deep hole, the team knew they were close, but when the rescuers finally reached in, the puppies were still just out of reach. One by one they tried, each person stretching an arm into the narrow pipe in a desperate attempt to pull the frightened puppies to safety.

In total, five GRSPCA staff members and five municipal workers worked together to free the puppies. For hours, the team kept digging, reaching, and trying again, refusing to give up on the trapped litter.

During the process, the team had to seal off the pipe while digging after someone had flushed a nearby toilet.

Fortunately, the water drained into the ground and not into the pipe where the puppies were trapped.

After hours of digging and breaking through the drain, cutting away sections of the pipe, the team eventually managed to reach the puppies and reunite them with their mother.

“We cannot believe we got them. Those puppies could have been much further down that pipe and we are incredibly lucky,” said Noakes.

“I’m so relieved that the puppies could be rescued and that they are alive. Shame, they were so tired, hungry and thirsty when they came out,” said Esau.

Following the successful extraction, Lady and her puppies were transported to the GRSPCA for monitoring, where the mother was also sterilised. The GRSPCA credited the successful outcome to the persistent efforts of its staff and the George Municipality employees, who remained on-site until the litter was safely retrieved and reunited.