When searching for treats goes wrong.
Firefighters saved a senior pooch after she fell 23 feet down an open utility hole in Portland, Oregon, on Friday.
Tess, a 14-year-old Labrador retriever, plummeted down the exposed manhole cover while city workers were inspecting a storm drain.
“She just walked up expecting a treat and just went over the edge and disappeared,” Larry Beutler, Tess’s owner, told KGW 8.
Beutler said it was “quite a shock” to see his pup vanish down the hole and he quickly called his wife to break the horrifying news.
“It was absurd,” Linda Beutler, Tess’s dog mom, said after discovering her canine may be in grave danger. “We went through a real life-threatening thing with her before Christmas, so it was just like, ‘What else can happen?'”
Portland Fire & Rescue arrived on the scene and sent a firefighter down the hole to secure Tess in a harness so they could pull her up using a pulley system called an Arizona Vortex.
Tess, who had been underground for nearly an hour, wasn’t injured when rescuers made it down to her since there was a pile of leaves and other miscellaneous debris that cushioned her fall.
As Tess arose from the utility hole, a crowd of neighbors formed and cheered her rescuers and her safe return to the surface.
Linda Beutler, who called the firefighters “heroes” for saving her pup, had a good sense of humor about the ordeal once Tess was back by her side.
“We just want to tell other dogs, don’t be like Tess,” she joked. “Don’t just walk up to people and expect to get treats because you might fall in a hole.”