Wade Deisman thought his neighbour got a new puppy.

Little did he know at the time, that he would soon be involved in a rescue mission.

Deisman, who recently moved to White Rock from Abbotsford where he owned a hobby farm, was accustomed to the sound of animals nearby.

Still, the constant barking was starting to get on his nerves.

In an interview with Peace Arch News on Sunday, Deisman said he went outside on Friday to figure out where the bark was coming from. He checked his neighbours’ yard.

“But I couldn’t see where they put the kennel,” Deisman said.

Saturday morning came, and Deisman could still hear the dog barking.

“I remember thinking to myself, jeez, the neighbours, even if they have a puppy, they need to take better care of the puppy. The puppy sounds miserable.”

Deisman went outside to investigate again, but wasn’t able to locate the animal. While he was outside, the barking went silent. Deisman went back into his house, and later that day, the barking returned.

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“I decided to be a little bit bolder in terms of looking at my neighbours’ yard. I couldn’t see a puppy anywhere, and I really thought it was a puppy at this point,” Deisman said.

While he was outside this time, the dog barked.

“I was like, hey, that’s not coming from the neighbours’… that sounded like it was actually coming from my house,” Deisman said. “That’s really weird.”

Deisman went to his backyard deck and the dog barked a second time.

“Shivers went right through me,” Deisman said. “That came from right beneath me.”

Almost immediately, Deisman said he felt a wave of adrenaline.

“This is a different situation than I thought it was. Suddenly, I thought this may not be a case of a puppy next door, this may be a case of a dog trapped.”

Deisman crawled underneath his deck to look for the dog, but couldn’t see anything.

Underneath his deck, there was a little enclosure at the top of a muddy climb. Deisman tried to get to the enclosure, but it was a tight fit.

“I was on my belly, literally dragging myself up to see.”

In a panic, he got a shovel and dug his way to the enclosure.

“I spent like 15 minutes making enough of a pathway,” he said. “And then I tried to climb up there again and I almost got stuck. So I backed off and told myself to calm down.”

He eventually grabbed a crowbar.

“I pried off one long deck piece and I could see that there was an enclosure there and it was quite deep. And it’s a well.”

But still, Deisman couldn’t see a dog.

“So I took off three or four more (boards). And finally I can see just some fur of the dog, but it was pretty dark. I just turned on my flashlight on my iPhone and looked down there and there’s the dog.”

Deisman said the dog was inside a well that was about four feet deep. The deck joists prevented him from reaching the animal.

“At this point, honestly, I was feeling so worried and scared for the dog,” he said, adding that he threw some chicken to the animal.

Deisman grabbed a saw and cut through the joists. He brought the animal, which wasn’t a puppy, but a senior cairn terrier, into his house.

The dog’s tag had a City of White Rock identification number, but no other details that might help him locate the owner.

He checked Craigslist.

“The second entry on Craigslist, White Rock Dog Missing. I pulled it up, and sure enough, that was the dog. There was a picture right there.”

Deisman called the owners, Tim and Yvonne Everson, and told him he had located their dog.

“They both just broke into tears. I’ve got a couple pictures of Tim with his head against the dog. Just snuggling right at that moment when they first saw each other,” Deisman said

Diesman brought Tim and Yvonne to his backyard to show them where the dog had been stuck.

“They were just shocked.”

Tim, who contacted Peace Arch News to share the story of the rescue, said it’s likely his 10-year-old cairn terrier, Callie, was either chased into the well by a raccoon or tried to catch a pest. Cairn terriers, he explained, are known to hunt rats.

Tim said Callie escaped their backyard on Thursday at about 6 p.m. The dog was discovered 43 hours later. The Eversons live in the same neighbourhood as Deisman.

“He phoned us yesterday afternoon around 2 and said, ‘I think I have your dog.’ And we just went nuts. It was great,” Tim said.

The Eversons offered Deisman reward, but he declined.

“I told them I’ve been so happy to be living in White Rock and I met so many nice people. I’m just honoured to be part of the neighbourhood. So, just a Good Samaritan act by a neighbour,” Deisman said.

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