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January 2010
 Jose Wagner had no idea where his 1½-year old German shepherd, Mater, went when he got lost Tuesday. So the concerned Westminster resident called the Humane Society of Carroll County and discovered the dog’s whereabouts.
Mike Keiner, an animal control officer with the Humane Society, said the organization received a call Tuesday morning that a dog had been running around the Westminster Post Office near Englar Road. Keiner said he tried to restrain Mater but wasn’t able to.
Mater wandered around a storm drain on the property, sniffed and disappeared, Keiner was told by post office employees. “We assumed that he either went in and came out and left or he was still down there,” he said.
Turns out, it was the latter. Keiner put a tape recorder around the storm drain to monitor sound. Within an hour, he said he heard a couple of yelps.
That’s when the Humane Society contacted PULS Inc. in Finksburg. Fox is a utility locator, a person who finds underground utilities such as water and gas lines. Fox said it took him about five minutes to find the manhole cover. But it took about an hour and a half to access it because it was covered by about 18 inches of dirt. Keiner and Humane Society officials then hooked up a tripod and hoisted Keiner down the hole Wednesday morning.
Keiner sedated Mater and then rescued him. He said he’s never seen a case like this before. “If we wouldn’t have gotten him out, he would’ve probably died down there,” he said. “We assumed that the dog was down there but we had no idea that he was.”
The rescue mission took about an hour and a half. Vicki Ensor, a post office employee, watched as workers rescued Mater. She smiled as the dog was lifted from the hole. “If someone wouldn’t have seen him go in that hole, he wouldn’t have gotten out,” she said. This was the first time Mater’s gotten out of the yard, Wagner said. He lives on West Main Street. “Hey, what were you doing down there?” Wagner asked Mater. Wagner then patted Mater’s head, rubbed his stomach and hugged him.
Nicky Ratliff, executive director of the Humane Society, said Wagner signed Mater over to the organization because he wanted to find a more appropriate home for him. “He just feels like he can’t safely contain his dog because he chews out of his kennel,” she said. By Wednesday afternoon, Ratliff said Mater was doing fine and was in great shape. Ratliff said the organization doesn’t track the number of animal rescues every year but said this one was definitely unique. “They’re not all this extreme,” she said.
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| Utility Mapping Solutions to Aid the One-Call System |
November 2008
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| It was clear at the beginning of the project in Aberdeen, Md., that locating this seemingly-undetectable fiber-optic utility would be no easy task. In fact, with only sporadic pieces of broken tracer wire left, it was impossible for the contract locate company to mark the duct for the One-Call system and ongoing construction in the area...(more) |
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