“We had five kids with us,” Gerry Keene told As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner, and they had run ahead. “All of a sudden, the kids are yelling back at their dad, ‘Hey, Dad, there’s a dog here!’ And we say, “Yes, no, it doesn’t exist.” But there was.
Abby, a 13-year-old mixed breed canine, went missing from her home on June 9. Abby was found 150 meters down in a cave in Missouri, more than 2 months after she disappeared. (Submitted by Gerry Keene) When Keene and his team found her, they were about 150 meters down in the Berome Moore Cave System in Perry County, darkness broken only by their headlamps. “All she could do was lift her head and look at us. She wasn’t responding to verbal commands. She wasn’t even trying to get up,” said Keene, who helped rescue her. “He was in terrible, terrible shape.” They didn’t know if she was hurt, or maybe even mad, but they knew they had to try to get her out. The team quickly came up with a plan. Jerry was going back and trying to find help — and also trying to find out who the dog was. Abby had lost half her weight after being away for 2 months, Keane said. (Submitted by Rick Haley) He went back – about a 20 minute hike – and found a guy named Rick Haley who had also just surfaced from the cave. “Rick had the idea of ​​using a blanket bag and that worked like a charm. It was absolutely perfect,” Keene said. “He actually stood up for us, he recognized us, and he was walking. But of course he wanted to walk deeper into the cave. And he’s like, no, the entrance is here.” So they spread the blanket over the bag and invited her. “She just went right onto that blanket because it’s probably the warmest thing, the driest thing she’s been on for who knows how long. So she was very happy to be laying on the blanket,” Keene recalled. Abby, seen here with one of her rescuers, Rick Haley, is said to be doing better since her rescue, gaining weight and getting back to her old self. (Submitted by Rick Haley) Meanwhile, her owner had been located and was there when she was picked up. “It was really cool because he was very, very grateful, very happy to see the dog, talking to us a lot about what had happened,” Keene said. “They had given that dog up for dead. She had been gone for two months.” No one knows how Abby ended up in the cave—perhaps chasing a rabbit, Keane speculated—or exactly how long she’d been there. Keene says she had lost about half her body weight, but is doing better every day now. “[She’s] she is slowly getting back to her good old self,” he said. As for Keene, he says he’s been involved in more than one animal rescue in his life — another dog and even a cow. But nothing like this. “You come to caving prepared for a lot of things,” he said. “But you don’t come prepared to find a dog.” Written by Stephanie Hogan. Interview produced by Chris Trowbridge.