The Alpha Dog

To rescue lost animals, she climbs into places most of us avoid

- Sydney Page

Callie Clemens was close to falling asleep at around 11 p.m. last 26 July, when an emergency message on the Facebook page she runs—Lost & Found Pets of Spring Branch & Spring Valley—caught her eye. A tiny black puppy had been spotted scurrying across a road in Spring Branch, the Houston neighbourhood where she lives. Whimpers had been heard from inside a nearby storm drain, so there was likely another puppy—maybe more than one—stuck down there.

Clemens sprang out of bed and drove to the scene. Once there, she heard desperate howls and whimpers from underground echoing through the storm drain. She grabbed her son’s toy flashlight from her car, pulled a metal grate off the drain and shimmied down.

“I wasn’t very well equipped,” Clemens says. “I was not expecting to go into the drain.” But nobody else was around, and puppies were stuck in there. “Somebody’s got to do it.”