A dog found on the streets of Udaipur, India, stuck in tar and completely unable to move has made a miraculous recovery thanks to the hard work of a team of dedicated volunteers.
The poor animal was found inside a steel barrel stuck in tar without food or water. The volunteers believe the dog was in there for a few days, unable to move after getting stuck.
The volunteers, from Animal Aid Unlimited, had to move the barrel with the dog still inside, before cutting it open and slowly loosening the tar around the animal in order to free it.
After hours of diligent work, the trapped dog was freed from the tar. However, the substance had badly burned its skin, and it needed essential medical attention.
You can watch it here:
Thankfully the volunteers found the animal just in time.
Sharing the video, they said:
A street dog in Udaipur, India, was found trapped in a drum of tar where we believe she had stuck and completely unable to move for several days.
Animal Aid Unlimited’s rescue team found the sweet dog hyperventilating and terrified, trapped chest-deep in tar inside the drum. We think she may have gone inside the drum to get warm during the night, and that her own body heat started to melt the tar which she then sank into and was unable to free herself from.
When we found her she was no longer struggling and seemed to have completely given up all hope.
The volunteers managed to loosen the tar with vegetable oil, after it had set rock-solid around the dog’s body.
Once free from the tar, the team set about getting rid of the tar that had embedded itself into the dog’s fur. They then had to treated the animal’s skin, which was badly damaged and burned.
It took three hours before the poor animal could stand again. The volunteers named her Asha, which means ‘hope’ in Hindi and, as the video shows, she was thankfully able to recover from the harrowing ordeal.
Animal Aid Unlimited rescues more than 3,500 dogs every year from the streets of Udaipur alone. You can find out more about them here.
Earlier this year, many dogs had to be rescued from areas of North and South Carolina, USA, after Hurricane Florence caused immeasurable damage in the area, forcing families to abandon their homes and pets.
In one instance, volunteers rescued six dogs which had been abandoned in a locked cage in North Carolina.
The dogs nearly drowned in rising flood waters before rescuers got to them. They were found barking, standing on their hind legs up against the front of the cage, desperate to get out.
You can watch the rescue effort here:
The animals were found at a property in Leland, North Carolina, where the owners had abandoned the house and the animals in order to escape Hurricane Florence.
Thankfully, volunteers found the dogs in time, and managed to rescue them all.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.