I can think of a few places where I wouldn’t want to go wandering through.

Abandoned buildings spring to mind. Graveyards at night. And definitely on that list, dirty sewers.

But then again, I’m not an animal rescuer.

So when Callie Clemens got an emergency message telling her that a tiny puppy was seen running across the road in Spring Branch, she ran to her car and headed to the nearby neighborhood in Houston, Texas, where she lives.

Clemens is well-known in Houston for the many animals she has saved. They range from dogs, cats and sometimes even the random possum or raccoon. She said that over the past 8 years, she and her dog, Giselle, have probably saved at least 100 animals.

The message said that a tiny black puppy was spotted scurrying across a road in Spring Branch, a neighborhood in Houston where she lives. Whimpers were also heard from inside a nearby storm drain, so there was likely more than one puppy stuck down there.

Callie Clemens with the first black lab puppy she rescued. Photo courtesy of Clemens

“(Giselle) is really good at sniffing things,” Clemens said. “She’s a smart girl.”

Once Clemens made it to the Spring Branch neighborhood, she parked and immediately heard frantic puppy whines coming from the storm drain. Immediately she grabbed one of her young son’s toy flashlights, pried open the storm drain gate and climbed down.

“I wasn’t very well-equipped,” Clemens said. “I was not expecting to go into the drain.” But with no one else able to help her, she had no choice.

Somebody’s got to do it,” she said.

So, making her way down the drain, which is nearly seven-feet-deep, she said, she began crawling through the cockroach-infested tunnel, until she got to an area that was able to be searched while she was in a crouch.

“I heard splashing. I had my flashlight, and I could see two sets of eyes looking at me, and then they ran off,” Clemens said. “They were crying.”

Sadly, though Clemens said she isn’t 100 percent sure how the puppies got into the drain, she said she suspects someone might have put the puppies there on purpose.

“(But) I don’t know if they fell down there,” she said.

One of the puppies Clemons rescued. Photo courtesy of Clemens

The Houston SPCA arrived and began helping Clemens comb the drain, looking for the puppies.

“We searched end to end, side to side,” Clemens said.

Unable to find the two puppies that were underground, they did find one female black lab running around outside. Clemens refused to give up on the puppies in the sewer.

After getting a few hours of sleep at home, Clemens came back to the storm drain with some volunteers.

“The next day we had a whole crew out there from sunup to sundown,” she said.

Emily Daniels, a Houston-based independent animal rescuer, showed up to help.

If you’re going in the storm drain, I’ll go, too,” Daniels told Clemens. “We all work together.”

Finally, after hours of searching, one of the two puppies was found outside one of the drain’s exits.

“We were very excited,” Clemens said. The puppy, named Timmy, was taken to a city pound for treatment and then given to a foster to help get him ready for adoption.

Animal dumping, Clemens said, is a big problem in Houston, as well as other parts of the United States. Breeders tend to “dump them and make them other people’s problems.”

So rescuers like Clemens often get slammed with phone calls for emergency rescues, like this one.

“What I do is just a small piece of what tons of people do here,” she said

Clemens thinks that at least one puppy remains stuck underground, and she has gone down the storm drain several times to look for it. She and other volunteers leave food down there, in the hope that the dog will survive until they rescue it. Some of the food has been eaten.

In the meantime, Clemens said she will keep at it until the last puppy is safe.

“I refuse to give up,” Clemens vowed. “We are going to find it.”

Watch below to see how Clemens and her volunteers have been searching for the puppies.

Sources: Washington Post | Daily Mail