Dog stands watch over her best dog friend stuck in a hole for a week

In the series finale of Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw’s closing narration waxes poetic on the power and virtue of friendship, the series’ abiding spirit for six seasons and two movies.

When it comes to relationships, Carrie said, “there are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back.”

I couldn’t help but think of what Carrie said when I read about the travails of Tillie and Phoebe—a setter and basset hound, respectively—in USA Today this morning.

According to the Facebook page of the Vashon Island Pet Protectors, a Washington state animal rescue organization, Tillie and Phoebe were found deep in the woods earlier this week after spending more than a week lost. Phoebe, the basset hound, had fallen into a concrete cistern and could not escape. Tillie, her setter friend, stood guard over Phoebe all day, every day, reportedly only leaving for a few minutes each day to look for help.

Finally, the Vashon Island Pet Protectors got a tip “from a community member reporting that for the past few days a ‘reddish’ dog had been coming up to them when they were out on their property and then promptly heading back into a ravine.” Then the search began:

So with a needle in the haystack hope we made our way into the ravine and after a bit of searching, finally heard that sweet sound we have been waiting for all week. A small one-woof response when we called out “Tillie.” A few minutes later we found her laying beside an old cistern with her head resting on the concrete wall. Heart sinking…we knew that meant Phoebe was inside the cistern and every breath was held and every doggie prayer offered that the peek over the rim would somehow find her safe. And gratefully… this time we have a happy ending with dear Phoebe found perched on some concrete rubble that held her out of the water.

Incredible.

“Hope is an awfully hard thing to keep open and alive in the face of heartbreak,” Amy Carey with VIPP told USA Today, “but it’s so important for happy endings for missing pets—or even for unhappy endings with closure.”

Phoebe, my friend, I know you are probably feeling pretty low right now, after spending a week in a hole. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Think of what you have: a truly great, lifelong friend in Tillie. Because as Carrie said, “the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you someone to love the you you love—well, that’s just fabulous.” : )