The Great Underground Dog Rescue

A carefree afternoon in the countryside of North Yorkshire, England, turned into a stressful adventure after a 12-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier named Maisy fell and got stuck in a narrow crack in the earth.

Maisy ended up trapped a whopping 21 feet underground, which resulted in her frantic owner calling in the Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team for help.

Saving Maisy required a massive team effort and a ton of ingenuity from the 18-person crew. Because the sinkhole was incredibly tight, the team had to send their smallest volunteers down into the darkness. Ditching their safety ropes — which were causing loose rocks to fall — the brave rescuers wedged their own bodies across the narrow gap, using a hammer and chisel to slowly widen the rock walls as they went.

After six grueling hours of listening to Maisy’s whimpers, three volunteers formed a human chain inside the hole and passed the dog up to safety.

One of the members of the team, Tony Heap, admitted that this rescue was special — and emotional. “I filmed the final moments,” Tony said, “and you could see the tears in the eyes of everybody as that dog came out of the ground.”