Saving Lucy

Walter Sprague
Art and Culture Reporter
 
Craig and Alex Drevecky are thrilled to have their beloved corgi mix, Lucy, safe and sound in their home. But for 20 hours, Friday night and Saturday morning, it was grave concern that occupied their minds. For those long cold hours, their 5-year-old rescue dog was missing, and they didn’t know if they would ever have that part of their family back with them again.
At 6 p.m. Friday, April 17, Lucy had been let outside. The unruly dog is a consummate chipmunk chaser and loved to antagonize the Dreveckys’ roosters. So it was not unlike her to leave their sight for a romp around the Fox Draw Road ranch and create as much mayhem as she could. But 6:15 came, and Lucy did not respond to her name. They started to look around the property but couldn’t find her.
“She didn’t even come when I opened the truck door.” Craig said, “And she always came for that.”
By 7 p.m., after looking everywhere they could think of, even driving all around looking for Lucy, Craig began to imagine the worst. Had a large predatory cat taken Lucy?
“I even looked in the culvert,” he said.
But he couldn’t see very far inside the pipe with his flashlight. The culvert lies in front of their house to divert rainwater away from the foundation of their home. It was getting late, the sun was going down, and the Dreveckys knew there was nothing more they could do outside. Craig posted about their lost Lucy on the Facebook page “Newcastle, Talk of the Town.” To their amazement, a couple of dozen people shared that post, and then it exploded, with comments coming faster than Craig’s ability to keep up. The outpouring of compassion touched them much. Nonetheless, it was a worrisome night for both, and sleep did not come easily.
When Saturday dawned, the search began again. Around 10 a.m., Craig looked in the culvert once more, without much hope. He was surprised to see two glowing eyes.
“Lucy?” he called again. 
The orbs blinked, and Craig shined the flashlight directly at them. It was Lucy. She was trapped inside the pipe, blocked by a large chunk of ice that enclosed most of the opening. She was about 13 feet back. The Dreveckys think she must have chased a chipmunk into the pipe, came to the large chunk of ice blocking her exit and couldn’t turn around or back out again.
Craig and Alex quickly grabbed some tools and tried to dig and chop their way through the ground to expose the conduit, but the rocky soil was too stubborn to continue in this manner. They called 911, but the operator scolded them for using the service for a
nonemergency and then hung up on them.
“It was an emergency to us,” Alex said, as Craig nodded his agreement, something every pet owner would probably understand.
Then they called the Weston County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Travis Garhart quickly came. After assessing the situation, he realized that some large machinery would be needed to dig through to rescue Lucy. He called Hurricane Services, and Merritt Crabtree was on his way with a large backhoe. Garhart also called the Weston County Volunteer Fire Department, and soon several volunteers had come by to assist in the project.
It was about noon by the time Crabtree arrived with the backhoe and started to dig the hard, rocky soil away. After exposing about 15 feet of pipe, about where the dog was trapped, they quickly unfastened two sections from each other. Crabtree was able to use the backhoe to remove the 12-foot length safely.
“He was like a surgeon with that backhoe,” Alex said, as she admired the skill
Crabtree showed.
With the section removed, the fire department started working. Using bars, sledgehammers and shovels, they chipped away and pulled and chipped some more at the large block of ice. At one time, they tried to flush it with water from a hose, but that proved to be of no value.
When 2 p.m. came, the firefighters, all of them volunteers, had finally removed enough of the ice so that one of them could reach in and pull Lucy out. She was wet, she was freezing, but she was free. After 20 hours of lying in freezing conditions, Lucy, tail wagging, greeted her family with visible expressions of love and gratitude. Alex took her inside shortly after that, wrapped in heated towels. Lucy stayed wrapped for about two hours to warm up.
“She was not herself,” Craig said, “For a couple of days, she just laid around.”
“She wasn’t bugging us,” Alex said, “That’s not like her. But on Monday, she started bugging us again, so we knew she was going to be alright.”
“It went smoothly once we all got there,” Deputy Garhart said, “It was everything one could hope for.”
Most of the people who came out to help quickly left after the excitement was
over. But Crabtree stayed behind, putting the culvert back together and covering it over again.
The Dreveckys wanted to express how much they are so thankful to the community and everyone who responded on Facebook, but especially to the volunteers from the fire department, the sheriff’s department, and Hurricane Services. They displayed nothing but love and gratitude for getting their family back together again. A friend of theirs, who lives in Minneapolis, even sent some candy to the fire department to show support.
Lucy is back to chasing chipmunks and wreaking havoc on any animal that invades the land. To watch her now, you would never realize that she ever had to suffer those 20 hours, trapped, freezing and terrified. Craig said they are covering both sides of the duct with some grating so that Lucy will not be able to get inside and trapped again.