After a deluge of mud — due to a heavy rainstorm and clogged drainage canal — filled the Camarillo Springs, Calif., home of Henry and Mim Needham overnight Friday, the couple became stuck in the waist-deep muck.
They had to be rescued by firefighters, who cut through their front door with a chainsaw and pulled the couple to safety out of the house.
Left behind was their 5-year-old Dachshund, Tinkerbell.
“I wanted to go back in, but I couldn’t get them to let me,” Henry told ABC7. “They went looking and said, ‘We couldn’t find her. We didn’t see her.'”
The Needhams were heartbroken. Their beloved little dog had probably been buried alive.
More than 18 hours later, a miracle occurred on their street, as neighbor Hal Hyman told ABC7.
On their way out to breakfast, the Needhams’ grandson, Sean Pyles, and his dad stopped by to check on the damaged home. When Pyles walked up to the door, he heard a familiar bark. On the other side of the window, covered head to tail in mud, was Tinkerbell.
“Oh, I was tears of joy, crying,” Pyles told ABC7.
Those happy tears were contagious — Hyman said there wasn’t a dry eye among the Needhams’ neighbors.
“‘Ventura, the animal has been extricated.’ Cheers erupted this morning inside the Ventura County Fire Communications Center,” the Ventura County Fire Department (VCFD) wrote on its Facebook page today.
“VCFD responded and made the rescue. A short time later, Tinkerbell’s owner arrived by taxi for an emotional reunion.”
The Needhams told ABC7 that had their grandson not stopped by their house this morning, TInkerbell might not have been seen and rescued.
“Sean is my hero,” Mim said.
Photo via Facebook