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A trapped terrier has been rescued by the RSPCA and firefighters in what his overjoyed owner describes as the best birthday present he could have wished for.

Angie Whittle was returning home after taking her terrier Timmy for a walk on Friday 4 July, when he caught sight of a rabbit and set off in hot pursuit. She ran after him but he had already disappeared into the fields behind their Shropshire home.

Every day for a week Angie and her husband Mark searched the area in the hope of finding Timmy, but there was no trace of the little terrier.

Then on Thursday evening (10 July) Angie decided to take their other dog, Meg, out to help with the search party. Quite quickly Meg sniffed out a sewerage pipe near to a riverbed and sat down beside it, refusing to move. When Angie put her ear to the pipe she realised she could hear breathing.

“Angie was sure she could hear Timmy inside, so we phoned a friend who is an ex-fireman and he came down with us to try and get him out,” said Mark Whittle.

“Along with the farmer whose land it was, we managed to dig down 10 feet and found the eight-inch wide steel pipe. It was only when we cut the pipe that we realised the sound had travelled and Timmy was actually about 20 or 30 metres away from where we thought he was,” added Whittle.

After five hours of trying to rescue Timmy unaided, the distraught couple contacted the RSPCA and Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service.

RSPCA Animal Collection Officer (ACO) Claire Davis was the first to arrive on the scene: “I assessed the scene and verified there was really an animal in the pipe and soon afterwards a fire crew arrived. They started work at 10.15pm and Timmy was finally pulled out unhurt by one of the firefighters at about 1.30am,” she said.

Timmy was seen straight away by an emergency vet and was treated for a slight eye infection, but amazingly he wasn’t even suffering from dehydration - despite being trapped in the pipe for a week.

Timmy’s owners said they were so grateful to both the firefighters and the RSPCA for helping them to rescue Timmy. “It was my birthday on Friday 11 July - the day we got him out of the tunnel - and getting Timmy back was the best birthday present I could hope for,” said Mr Whittle.

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