Hyderabad: Dogged bid brings puppy joy

Hyderabad: Three puppies that had a steep 30-feet fall into an open pit near Hitech City had a happy reunion with their shell-shocked mother here on Sunday, thanks to timely support from animal rights activists. As activists uploaded the video on facebook, it raised a storm in social media and drew close to 2.5lakh views, 10,000 likes and 1,900 ‘share’.

The trio of Pradeep Nair, Anthony Prabhuteja and J Santoshi, volunteers with the Blue Cross here, undertook the rescue in a professional manner. They went down one by one into the pit, hanging by a rope held by other volunteers from atop the pit, after having tied themselves to a body harness. Another rope with a plastic bag was let down into the pit to have the puppies carried up. A rope tied to a strong structure was sent down as a lifeline.

Pradeep who conducts training in animal rescue at the behest of Animal Warriors India says, “We’re among the few having the training to do such rescue operations. We were also helped by GHMC staff. Had the rescue been delay, the pups would have died due to hunger or hypothermia.”

After the rescue, the mother of the three pups was nowhere to be seen. “We played out a loud video from the internet, that’s of a pup crying. Soon, the mother emerged from the bushes. Her excitement and happiness cannot be explained in words when she saw the puppies. She wagged her tail and started licking us and the puppies.”

“The locals fed the pups with warm milk, and we shifted the mother with her pups to a safer location,” explained Pradeep.

This was not the first rescue that Pradeep and his team undertook. Last month, a large bull had got stuck in an irrigation well near Alwal and they rescued it by use of a crane. Pradeep had to get inside the well thrice before the bull could be rescued.