Clemens, a mama of 6-year-old twin kids, is understood in the Houston location for saving animals. She has actually saved dogs, cats and sometimes possums and raccoons. Over the previous 8 years, she approximates she has actually saved a minimum of 100 animals, frequently with the help of her own 4-year-old rescue dog, Giselle.
“She is really good at sniffing things,” Clemens said. “She’s a smart girl.”
Moments after Clemens looked out to the puppy scenario around 11 p.m. on July 26, she drove directly to the scene. Once there, she heard desperate dog sounds from underground echoing through a storm drain. She got among her child’s toy flashlights that remained in her car, pulled a metal grate off the drain, and shimmied down.
“I wasn’t very well-equipped,” Clemens said. “I was not expecting to go into the drain.”
But no one else was around, and puppies were stuck in there.
“Somebody’s got to do it,” she said.
After she reduced herself down the drain — which is approximately seven-feet-deep, she said — she crawled through a 24-inch by 10-foot cockroach-infested tunnel, then reached a location where she might crouch and search. It was approximately 700 backyards of pitch black.
“I heard splashing. I had my flashlight, and I could see two sets of eyes looking at me, and then they ran off,” Clemens said, explaining that she most likely terrified the dogs. “They were crying.”
Clemens isn’t sure how the puppies got stuck in the storm drain. There is an opening where they might have slipped through, though she presumes someone may have put them in there deliberately.
“I don’t know if they fell down there,” she said.
The individual who at first informed her about the roaming pups likewise called the local SPCA, and staff showed up around midnight, likewise climbing up into the drain. Clemens dealt with them till 3 a.m. to attempt to find the dogs.
“We searched end to end, side to side,” Clemens said.
It wasn’t Clemens’s very first time decreasing a storm drain to save an animal. She co-manages the “Lost & Found Pets of Spring Branch & Spring Valley” Facebook page, and she runs Paws off the Streets, an outreach program to support regional animals in requirement.
They were unable to discover the 2 dogs that Clemens saw underground, however they did discover one female black laboratory mix puppy that was wandering around outdoors. They rescued her from under a dumpster and the SPCA took her in.
Knowing there were at least 2 more puppies caught listed below ground, Clemens was not ready to quit.
Venturing down a storm drain “is terrifying” she said, “but it would never resonate with me to know that I left an animal in there to starve and suffer.”
She went home for a couple of hours of sleep, then directly back to the storm drain. Several volunteers joined her.
“The next day we had a whole crew out there from sunup to sundown,” she said, including that city employees likewise came, and a regional engineer drew a map of the drain system.
Emily Daniels, a Houston-based independent animal rescuer, appeared to help, also, and used to hole up with Clemens.
“If you’re going in the storm drain, I’ll go, too,” Daniels, 39, informed Clemens. “We all work together.”
After numerous hours of searching, they lastly discovered a small black puppy that left from the storm drain. While Clemens was still underground, she said, other volunteers above ground saw the dog standing outside a little tunnel at one exit of the drain. He then scooted under a close-by fence.
“We were very excited,” said Clemens, including that the male puppy weighed about 5 pounds, and had parasites and ringworm. They called him Timmy, and he was taken to a city pound, prior to he was moved to a foster home on Aug. 1.
Clemens is an animal fan, and said she ended up being a rescuer since of the overpopulation of stray animals in Houston — which has actually ended up being a public safety problem. People in the Houston location have actually been afraid and concerned about violent packs of dogs.
Puppy disposing is a significant problem in the city and elsewhere in the country, Clemens said, explaining that numerous breeders whose supply surpasses the need “dump them and make them other people’s problems.”
Local rescuers like Clemens are flooded with immediate calls.
“What I do is just a small piece of what tons of people do here,” she said.
Twin sis Tena Lundquist Faust and Tama Lundquist run the Houston animal rescue not-for-profit Petset, and just recently launched a documentary called “For the Animals,” which highlights the animal issue in the city. In addition to strays, shelters are forced to euthanize more animals due to overcrowding.
“If the rest of the world could see what we see on a daily basis, they would be shocked; they would be horrified,” Tena Lundquist Faust said. “It is a public health and public safety crisis.”
“The animals are suffering terribly,” Tama Lundquist said. “We see a lot of animals very abused and neglected.”
As city governments have actually not dealt with the problem, the sis said, specific rescuers, consisting of Clemens, have actually handled the duty.
“It’s hard to imagine what our city would look like without them,” said Lundquist Faust, including that in Clemens’s case, “once she becomes focused on a rescue situation, she is unstoppable.”
“She is really a rock star,” included Lundquist.
Clemens believes that a minimum of one puppy stays stuck underground, and she has actually decreased the storm drain numerous times to try to find it. She and other volunteers leave food down there, in the hope that the dog will endure till they rescue it. Some of the food has actually been consumed.
Tons of individuals have actually signed up with the search effort, and Rescue Pets Movement, a regional not-for-profit, wants to find permanent homes for the 2 puppies that were discovered — in addition to the 3rd, once it is rescued. The objective is to carry the 3 puppies beyond Houston to position them in permanently houses.
In the meantime, Clemens said she will keep at it till the last puppy is safe.
“I refuse to give up,” Clemens promised. “We are going to find it.”
