After the eruption of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, Carol Hosley feared that she had lost everything – her home, all of her belongings, and even her two dogs.
Living in Puna, Hawaii, Carol’s home was located near the active volcano and when it erupted, she found emergency crews banging on her door at 2 am. Apparently, the ground had cracked open near her Leilani Estates apartment and it was spewing lava and dangerous sulfur dioxide gas. The 70-year-old woman needed to evacuate immediately.
As Carol quickly tried to pack her belongings, the firemen came through the door and spooked her dog Brus in the process. The scared dog bolted out the door in the chaotic moment, and Carol’s other dog, Little Dude, followed.
Carol knew, when she adopted Brus from Aloha Ilio Rescue, he had a nervous temperament around men. However, the dogs ran so fast, that she had no time to wrangle them or put them on a leash.
Due to the dire urgency of the situation, the fire crew wouldn’t allow Carol to stay behind to search for her dogs.
“[The firemen] weren’t willing to wait,” Aloha Ilio Rescue wrote on Facebook. “And she is in her 70s. She had to leave.”
Daylynn Kyles, president of Aloha Ilio Rescue, caught wind that Brus was missing, and having known him from the past, she was determined to help find him and Little Dude. She knew how much the dogs meant to Carol.
Soon, volunteers from Aloha Ilio Rescue were taking turns searching the neighborhood after the lava flows began to cool, searching each crack and crevice.
“We left a crate and food for him. There are fresh footprints, his size, on Luana Street in the mud,” the rescue wrote on Facebook Friday, May 11. “If you see him PM us. Women only. He is terrified of life as it is … men sends him over the top.”
After a week of looking for the two dogs, the shelter staff and Carol feared the worst for Brus and Little Dude.
“We’ve been looking for him for 10 days, and we’ve just kept going back,” Kyles told Hawaii News Now.
Kyles went back to the neighborhood on the 10th day with two female friends and sounds of lava bombs in the background – that’s when she spotted them trapped between a cooling lava flow.
“They were stuck behind a fence, and couldn’t get out because of the lava that surrounded them. It was crazy,” Kyles told Hawaii News Now. “We just knew this dog was probably just terrified.”
Using a machete to make a pathway through the jungle plants to reach the dogs, Kyles and her friends finally reached the scared little dogs that were covered in bites from red ants.
“Tanya crawled into a hole in the bush most likely made by feral pigs and saw Brus and Little Dude hunkered down along a fence surrounded by lava,” Donna Pacheco, vice president of Aloha Ilio Rescue, told The Dodo. “When the dogs heard them they started barking. Tanya climbed the fence and handed the dogs off to Kerry. They then headed out of the bushes.”
Kyles and the two women were beyond ecstatic that the dogs were okay and they’d be reunited with their owner.
“I’m just thrilled to death, I just couldn’t be happier,” Carol told Hawaii News Now. “The other stuff is stuff, but I got the dogs.”
The dogs will continue to stay with Aloha Ilio Rescue until Carol is able to find a new place to live, but now they are safe and happy which provides a little ray of sunshine in such a devastating moment in time.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
