Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company 
 
By HECTOR GUTIERREZ
Rocky Mountain News (Denver)  

Cody will never know how close the inside of a muddy draining pipe came to being his final resting place.

For a little more than eight hours Thursday, the wayward chocolate Labrador was stuck in the muck of an 18-inch-wide pipe that runs under Sixth Avenue West Estates in Jefferson County.

With Cody's worried owners and dozens of anxious neighbors keeping their fingers crossed, West Metro Fire Rescue firefighters Dave Lesage and Lt. Will Atkinson emerged at 7:41 p.m. from below the street with the lab barking, its legs and chest coated in mud.

The fearful stares turned to cheers and hugs on South Flora Way.

"All right, Cody!" shouted Seve DeSoto, 16, the dog's owner, as the dog was given a quick checkup by veterinarian Mark Howard.

"I'm so happy he's out," DeSoto said. "It's incredible. These (firefighters) did everything they could for him."

Despite a rapid heart rate after he emerged from the pipe, Cody became much calmer as his owners and well-wishers hugged him and dried him with towels.

"He's going to do fine," Howard said.

But he was in big trouble for a while.

Cody's ordeal began about 11:30 a.m. when his dog sitter, Larry Posanka, was hurling a tennis ball to Cody and two other Labradors in the Sixth Avenue West Park open space. Posanka and his girlfriend, Sharon Gill, had been caring for Cody.

Posanka said he threw the tennis ball down the ravine. Two of the Labradors came back; Cody didn't.

"I decided to walk over to the creek and no Cody. Then I heard barking and echoing," Posanka said.

Posanka found the drainage pipe and saw that Cody managed to crawl in about 150 feet. Cody, who weighs about 100 pounds, was unable to turn around.

Posanka phoned his girlfriend, Gill, at work. After Gill arrived, she stayed with Cody for about four hours.

"I kept saying, 'Cody, it's OK. Be quiet, be gentle, relax,'" Gill said.

Firefighters entered the drainage pipe from the curb side of Flora Way and made their way down. Two-person teams of firefighters made their way nearly 40 feet into the pipe and spent nearly eight hours digging mud and rock from the pipe and shoveling the debris into buckets.

Lines were installed to support the firefighters and the dog with air. At times, DeSoto and his his 12- year-old sister, Sabrina DeSoto, could hear their dog barking under the street below them.

"He likes climbing into small spaces and under tables," DeSoto said.

Lesage, Cody's rescuer, said the dog once backed away from the firefighters who tried to place a noose around his neck. Finally, Cody placed his paws over the mud and crawled out.

When Cody came up to cheering neighbors he glanced back at all the commotion with his tail wagging.

"He looks like, 'Did I do something wrong?' " said Denice DeSoto, the children's mother.