Firefighters reunite with dog they found wedged between warehouse walls in Hialeah – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports

HIALEAH, FLA. (WSVN) – There was a canine celebration in Hialeah when some firefighters get together with a special four-legged patient that they rescued from a tight squeeze.

7News captured the moment Hialeah Fire Rescue members greeted Yanko on Thursday.

“Hi, buddy,” said one of the firefighters as he petted the dog.

What a difference a couple of days make.

This rescue reunion was made possible after Yanko took a lick when he got trapped between two warehouses in the area of West Fifth Avenue and 18th Street.

A neighbor heard his cries for help on Tuesday, setting off a rescue mission with Hialeah Fire Rescue.

A mechanic says Yanko lives at one of the warehouses and was probably chasing another animal when he became stuck.

“The owners told us that there was a dog stuck in there, and we couldn’t see it,” said Hialeah Fire Rescue Paramedic Roly Medina, “so we just walked in there with the lights, and way up in there we saw the building tapers, and the a dog was in there wedged, facing the opposite way.”

The firefighters wasted no time. The crew of 11 worked tirelessly for two hours to free Yanko.

“We tried everything, not to do any damage to the structure of the building,” said Medina. “We put a lasso over his neck and tried to lift him a little bit. We tried to get to him; there wasn’t enough room for us to get there.”

After trying to reach the dog from above and from behind, their only option was to find a safe place to cut through the wall. The firefighters took every precaution to keep him alive.

“We always take precautions as far as, you know, getting the job done without anybody getting hurt, and basically just working with the tools, just making sure that we don’t get hurt working with the tools, and of course, not hurting the dog when we opened, breached the wall,” said Medina. “We didn’t want to hurt the animal. Other then that, it was pretty routine. We train for this all the time.”

Now Yanko is free, awaiting his daily croqueta from a food truck, thanks to the creativity of these firefighters.

“It’s great, it’s very satisfying. We do the job for a living, and very satisfying to help anybody out, but at the end of the day, you know, everybody loves their pet,” said Medina, “I had a pet just like that one, and I treated that pet like it was my own. I would never leave them there to starve or die, so we did what we had to do. Everybody did a good job.”

A mechanic at the warehouse says Yanko suffered a few scratches but is on the mend.

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