CEDAR CITY — Firefighters helped rescue a pregnant dog trapped underneath a Cedar City home earlier this week.
Cedar City Fire Chief Mike Phillips said the incident occurred Tuesday afternoon at a house on Pinecone Drive.
Police were initially called to the scene by the homeowner, who said the dog had gone under the house and was unable to get back out. Responding police officers then called the fire department for assistance.
“She was going to have her babies there, but she got caught underneath the porch off the back of the house, a slab of concrete that was added on,” Phillips said. “It looks like there was a kind of a little space underneath there and the dog had crawled in there. She was really pregnant. In fact, she started delivering her puppies like 10 minutes after we got her out.”
The rescue operation lasted about an hour and a half, Phillips said, adding that precautions were taken so as not to agitate the dog any further.
“What we did was we took the tools that we have for technical rescue, a jackhammer, digging tools and a hammer drill, and basically went along there,” Phillips said. “Once you start breaking concrete, it’s just going to chip everywhere. So we just slowly chipped that concrete out.
“After we got the hole big enough, she came and poked her head out, but her belly was so fat, she still couldn’t get out. So, one of the officers that used to be in animal control officer says, ‘Let me try this.’ And he just kind of turned her on her side where there was a little more room and then she was out.”
The dog subsequently went into labor and later gave birth to 10 puppies, Cedar City Police Sgt. Clint Pollock said, calling the rescue effort “a great success.”
“We would like to recognize our fire department for a huge save today,” Cedar City Police Department said in a Facebook post thanking the firefighters for their efforts.
Updated April 5, 5:30 p.m. The dog’s owner Joni Sillitoe told Cedar City News Friday afternoon that the dog actually gave birth to 11 puppies, rather than 10. “She is a first-time mother, so we had to teach her how to feed them, but she is doing good now,” Sillitoe said of the mother dog, whose name is Wilakur. The pups haven’t been named yet, but Sillitoe says they plan to name one Blaze in honor of the fire department and one Duffy in honor of the police officer who pulled Wilakur out from under the porch.
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Cedar City firefighters work to free a trapped dog from underneath a home, Cedar City, Utah, April 2, 2019 | Photo courtesy Cedar City Police Department via Facebook, St. George News / Cedar City News Cedar City firefighters work to free a trapped dog from underneath a home, Cedar City, Utah, April 2, 2019 | Photo courtesy Cedar City Police Department via Facebook, St. George News / Cedar City News Cedar City firefighters work to free a trapped dog from underneath a home, Cedar City, Utah, April 2, 2019 | Photo courtesy Cedar City Police Department via Facebook, St. George News / Cedar City News Cedar City firefighters work to free a trapped dog from underneath a home, Cedar City, Utah, April 2, 2019 | Photo courtesy Cedar City Police Department via Facebook, St. George News / Cedar City News
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