The incredible rescue of a child after 14 days under the rubble in Venezuela: “my dog ​​kept me alive by licking me”

The boundary between life and death has thinned to the point of depending on an ancestral bond of pure loyalty. In the dramatic context of the violent earthquake that shook Venezuela on June 24th, an authentic miracle of survival took place. A young boy was pulled out alive after spending two weeks trapped inside an underground cavity caused by the collapse of his building. Next to him, without ever looking for an individual escape route or giving in to despair, his faithful dog remained who became the only bulwark against death.

The dramatic collapse in La Guaira

The construction catastrophe hit the state of La Guaira hard, crumbling dozens of civil structures. The specific rescue operation focused on the remains of block 3 located in the Páez neighborhood, in the town of Catia La Mar. In this portion of the territory, the rescue teams coordinated by the chief of the local fire brigade were carrying out the search for the missing in a scenario that was now almost devoid of hope. On July 8, the operators picked up faint acoustic signals coming from underground, concentrating manual digging operations until they intercepted the cavity in which the child and the animal were confined.

The decisive role of the animal against death

The biological conditions of the child at the time of recovery were extremely critical: the clinical picture showed severe profound dehydration combined with marked muscular and respiratory debilitation, due to the lack of oxygen and dust. Once stabilized in the local hospital, the young man wanted to give a touching testimony that clarified the dynamics of his survival, explaining that in moments of maximum physical prostration, when he lost consciousness, the dog’s tactile stimulus forced him to wake up. The child’s words moved the rescuers:

My dog ​​kept me alive, he licked me when he saw me faint.

Recovery and medical treatment

Immediately after the extraction from the debris pit, which took place amidst the spontaneous applause of the emergency personnel, the boy was urgently transferred by ambulance to the medical center to receive targeted intravenous therapies. At the same time, the animal was also taken over by a team of volunteer veterinary doctors who found it to be in a state of shock and malnutrition, but without internal bone lesions.