Animal Control Officers and Construction Workers Team Up to Save a Trapped Donkey

What started as a normal call to Riverside County Department of Animal Control about a dog trapped in a sinkhole ended a full mission to rescue something a bit bigger than a dog.

When Riverside Animal Control officer Christopher Peck arrived to the scene he discovered that the presumed dog that was trapped in the hole was actually a donkey.

"I'm assuming that maybe the donkey is kind of sinking his legs into the ground" said Peck.

Construction workers were cleaning mud off the streets and gutters when they found the donkey in what looked like a two by three foot opening in the ground.

But this was not a shallow hole.

"Turns out when I went to go look, yeah it opens up further down there and there it was a donkey, 10 feet down standing up not even laying down," said Peck.

Donkeys may have a reputation of being stubborn but so were these rescuers. They decided to come together and come up with a game plan.

"We had the benefit of having the construction crew nearby with a bunch of excavators,"  said Peck. "We asked if we could use them to dig out a trench."

Together they dug out a trench, a makeshift ramp, careful not to spook the donkey.

"We planned on hand digging right next to him until he got up on his own but halfway down and he saw his opportunity and jumped out," said Peck.

The officer said the donkey was lucky to get out alive since a lot of the times rescues like these don't always end with a happy ending.

Lucky for them, the donkey looked back at his heroes to thank them.

"If you see the video you can see him looking back, you know the kind of thanking us." said the construction workers.

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