It was a sunny spring day in Compton, California, when a group of residents spotted something white bolt across an unused canal. It’s not uncommon to find discarded items strewn along the canal, known as Compton Creek, but this was the first time they’d seen a dog trapped inside.
Situated tens of feet below ground level, the worried onlookers were unsure how a tiny pup made it into the canal in the first place.
“[T]here was no way in except to climb down,” Suzette Hall, founder of Logan’s Legacy 29 dog rescue, wrote on Facebook.
The Good Samaritans rushed to help the pup, later named Sammy, but he was too scared to let anyone get close.
“There were people who went to try to get the dog, but they were unable to secure [him],” Kristina Ross, one of Sammy’s original helpers, wrote in a Facebook comment.
Ross posted footage of Sammy sprinting down the canal on Facebook and pleaded for someone to save him. After three days of failed attempts, they contacted Logan’s Legacy, and Hall was eager to help.
Hall soon arrived with a humane dog trap in hand. As she figured out a way to lower herself into the canal to set up the trap, another pair of Good Samaritans descended.
“I [saw] the post today and jumped down the sewer with a rope,” one of the Good Samaritans wrote on Instagram. “[I] felt the need to rescue this poor baby.”
The pair trudged through muddy sewer water and trash to reach Sammy. As dangerous and uncomfortable as wading through the canal was, they knew that Sammy’s experience was even worse.
Hall watched as the men tried to catch Sammy multiple times. On their final attempt, one of the guys, Nelson, successfully cornered Sammy and threw a net around him to stop him from bolting again.
You can watch that moment here:
Nelson then carefully gathered up the net with Sammy still in it, and his partner lifted the pup out of the canal. They handed Sammy over to Hall, who gave the dog a big, triumphant hug before loading him up in her car.
“He literally melted in my arms,” Hall wrote. “He knew he was finally safe.”
Ross, the woman who had originally posted about Sammy, offered to foster him for the night. The grateful pup slept through the night in a cozy bed before heading to the veterinary clinic the next day, where he was immediately treated for a rotten tooth and an injured paw.
The tiny dog was soon on the mend, but his rescuers still couldn’t believe what he’d been through.
“I can’t imagine how scared he was down here in that big, huge canal, all by himself,” Hall wrote on Facebook. “He’s in recovery and doing just fine.”
While Sammy recovered at the vet clinic, he stole the heart of one of the vet techs caring for him. Instantly smitten with the pup, the loving vet tech decided to give him the best forever home he could’ve ever dreamed of.
“She said, ‘We have fallen in love … can we please adopt him?’” Hall wrote on Facebook. “[It’s] just so meant to be. He is beyond loved and getting spoiled.”
Over a month after his rescue, Sammy is thriving in his new home alongside his equally tiny Chihuahua sibling. His days are filled with cozy beds, walks with his family and play sessions with his doting sibling — and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
For his rescuers, it seems like Sammy’s journey through the canal was just yesterday. But for Sammy, his days of feeling alone and scared are far in the past. Now, he only knows love.
