This weekend’s rains led to a wild ride for an Aurora dog.
Somehow, the shiba inu got stuck in a storm-drain pipe, the Aurora Fire Department said in a news release.
The dog’s owners called for help after Tiki crawled into the pipe, which drains stormwater from the roof of a school on Iowa Drive.
First-responders called for help, and over the course of three hours, fire crews and school-maintenance personnel worked to free the frightened pooch.
It was determined the pipe stretched for about 125 feet under the school building and walkways. Rescuers tried to use a plumbing camera to locate the dog, but the cord wasn’t long enough.
So crews dug down and cut an access hole in the pipe, allowing them to find the dog using the camera.
Unfortunately, the dog kept running past the hole.
It took a surge of stormwater to free the dog, who rode it “similar to a water slide,” the release said.
Waiting rescuers grabbed him out of the pipe and returned him, uninjured, to his grateful owners.
Aurora officials did not identify them, but Lori Church posted a comment on The Denver Post’s website saying it was her dog.
She wrote, “The Aurora Fire Department will forever be my hero. They’re WONDERFUL!”
Church added: “I think it’s also important to give some recognition to the neighborhood. Several people — including kids between the ages of 5 and 12 — saw me lying facedown in the culvert before anyone arrived, and they stopped to check on me. One Good Samaritan is a nurse, and she later brought a bag of bottled waters for the crowd working to extricate my dog.”
