Doggone culvert

It seemed like a fairly simple call. A dog in a plastic culvert, could the Esko Fire Department help the owner get it out?

But this was no ordinary culvert, running from one side of the road to another. It was a culvert built at Oldenburg Point after the 2012 floods ripped through Jay Cooke State Park and the surrounding area.

"I think [the pipe] ran about 300-400 feet, down a steep ravine and probably emptied out into the river," said Esko fire chief Kyle Gustafson. "We aren't sure because we never could find the end. We looked for two hours."

When his volunteer firefighters first arrived at Oldenburg Point, they thought they could hear the Yorkshire terrier scratching about 30 feet away from the entrance of the pipe. So they started digging down to the pipe with shovels borrowed from park officials ... and eventually called Matt DeCaigny Excavating in Carlton, and they brought a mini-excavator to finish the job.

But when they cut the inspection hole in the pipe, the dog wasn't there.

Time to call another neighboring community for help - this time it was the city of Cloquet Water Department. Could they bring a sewer inspection camera over, the kind that they snake down the sewer line?

Two crew members came and eventually found the Yorkie peering back at the camera in the dark ... another 154 feet down the pipe.

That was the moment when Gustafson feared the worst: that they would simply have to leave the dog - named Lilly - trapped in the pipe, unable to climb back up its smooth interior.

She had tried climbing on the camera, but couldn't stay on, he added. By that time, they'd been there more than three hours.

Then someone had the idea of tying a safety vest to the camera end of the line.

"We sent it back down the pipe and the dog climbed on the vest, and we were able to pull it back 154 feet to the surface," Gustafson said.

By then there were about 30 people there, between park staff, Esko firefighters, Cloquet crew workers and DeCaigny employees, along with other concerned bystanders and the dog's owner.

"Everyone cheered at the end," he said, telling the story for the umpteenth time at the Carlton County Fair Thursday afternoon. "We had all been pretty worried, because we couldn't send that excavator down that steep hill. It was too dark and dangerous. But the second we sent the vest down, she just climbed right on like she'd been trained to do it. She didn't want to be in there any longer."

Gustafson urged pet owners to keep pets leashed, because the unexpected happens sometimes. But he was mostly relieved, and wanted to thank all the different groups that came together to save a tiny dog's life.

"I'm so happy and proud of everyone who worked and volunteer their time to have a great outcome," he said.