A Chihuahua Who Survived Twelve Days in a Storm Drain

On a Saturday afternoon in late July 2024, in a Phoenix neighborhood about fifteen minutes east of downtown, a small fawn chihuahua named Sunday slipped through a small gap in a backyard fence, ran along the perimeter for about thirty feet, and went down through a partially-removed storm drain grate at the corner of two residential streets. The household reported her missing at 4:18 p.m. Phoenix Animal Care and Control was called at 6:42 p.m. The neighborhood-wide search, including the storm drain system, lasted into the following Tuesday and turned up no signs of the dog.

Sunday was extracted from a storm drain about three blocks from the original entry point on the following Wednesday, twelve days after she had gone missing. She was, on the extraction team's first assessment, in significantly better shape than anyone had any right to expect. She walked out of the drain on her own. Her tail was, on the surviving video taken by a bystander, in motion.

I am writing about this with the household's permission. The story is on the rescue beat I cover, and Sunday's case sits in a specific category of small-dog survival stories that I have, over the years, come to take seriously rather than dismiss as anomalous. The Phoenix storm drain system, as Animal Control later confirmed, contained more displaced small dogs than the household and Animal Control had initially considered.

How she got in, briefly

The original gap in the fence had been there for several months, undocumented. The household, the Mendez family of three, had not noticed it because Sunday had not previously shown interest in the perimeter. The triggering event on the Saturday afternoon was, on Mr. Mendez's reconstruction, a small group of neighborhood children playing with a soccer ball that had bounced briefly into the yard; Sunday, alerted, had run the perimeter and found the gap.

The storm drain at the corner had a partially-removed grate. The grate had been, by the city's records, scheduled for replacement for some weeks. The combination of the perimeter gap, the soccer ball alert, and the open storm drain, on the household's later analysis, was the unfortunate combination.

Sunday went down at approximately 3:40 p.m., based on the soccer ball children's recollection.

The search, plainly

The household put up flyers, called Animal Control, and a Phoenix Fire Department crew opened three storm drains within a half-mile radius and used a small camera to inspect the system. They did not, on that pass, find Sunday.

The household conducted nightly visits to the surrounding storm drains, calling Sunday's name through the grates, listening for any response. They received no response that they could verify. By Day 8, the household had, on Mr. Mendez's account, begun the difficult internal work of preparing for the possibility that Sunday would not be recovered.

The extraction, plainly

On Day 12, a Wednesday at approximately 9:15 a.m., a maintenance crew from the city's water utility was conducting unrelated repair work on the storm drain at the corner of an intersection three blocks west of the original entry point. The maintenance crew lead, a man named Antonio Reyes, heard a sound from inside the drain as he opened the grate. He looked in with a flashlight. He saw, on his account, a pair of small bright eyes and a tail in motion.

Reyes called the Fire Department. The extraction took approximately forty minutes. Sunday emerged, walking on her own, with mild paw pad abrasions, visible weight loss, dehydration, and what was characterized as remarkable alertness for the duration. She was transported directly to the emergency vet clinic at the request of the household, who had been called by Animal Control the moment Sunday's identity was confirmed by microchip.

The medical side, briefly

The emergency clinic, a regional facility I have spoken with for several stories, found Sunday with the following assessment:

• Mild to moderate dehydration. Treatable with IV fluids.
• Approximately 12 percent loss of body weight. Concerning but recoverable.
• Paw pad abrasions on all four paws. Surface only; no deep tissue involvement.
• One small infected scrape on the right shoulder. Treatable with antibiotics.
• No fractures. No internal injuries. No major organ involvement.
• Bloodwork: surprisingly stable. Mild electrolyte imbalances consistent with the dehydration; no signs of acute kidney injury.

Sunday was held overnight for IV fluids and observation. She went home the following afternoon. The total veterinary bill, which the household paid, ran approximately $1,450. The full recovery took about three weeks.

How she survived twelve days, on careful examination

I want to write this part carefully, because the survival is the question that any reader will, on first hearing the story, want answered. The Phoenix storm drain system, in late July, has several specific features that both helped and hurt:

• Water access. The drains in the Mendez neighborhood had small standing pools of water in the lower sections, residue from the previous monsoon rain. Sunday had drinking water access throughout.
• Cooler ambient temperature. Underground drains in Phoenix are substantially cooler than the surface temperature in late July. The dehydration math, while still serious, was meaningfully better than it would have been on the surface.
• No predators. The drain system is a closed environment without coyotes, larger dogs, or other threats.
• No food. This was the limiting factor. Sunday survived on fat reserves and possibly on small organic debris that had washed into the drains. The 12 percent weight loss is consistent with twelve days without meaningful nutrition.

The clinical conclusion, from Dr. Patel at the emergency clinic, was that the cool ambient temperature and the water access were the variables that made the difference. A surface-temperature exposure of the same duration in late July Phoenix would have been fatal in days, not weeks. The storm drain, paradoxically, had been the protective environment.

The quiet paragraph, planted on cue

I will plant the quiet paragraph here, because Sunday has earned it and because the story does not work without it. The thing about a small dog surviving twelve days in a Phoenix storm drain is that the survival is not, on careful examination, primarily about resilience or determination. It is about the specific physical environment that the dog ended up in by accident, and about the small physiological reserves that a four-and-a-half-pound chihuahua had on the day she went down. Sunday is, on every available measure, a small ordinary chihuahua. She did not, in any sense the story sometimes implies, survive because she was extraordinary. She survived because the storm drain, by accident, had standing water and a cooler temperature, and she had enough fat reserves to last twelve days without food in the cooler temperature.

The household, I want to be clear, does not view it the way the popular framing of the story does. Mr. Mendez told me, when I sat with the family in February 2025, that they were not, in his words, "amazed by Sunday's strength" so much as "humbled by the small accidental margin." The dog had been one accident from going down a drain that did not have water, or from a hotter environment, or from a duration past her physiological reserve. The system, in his view, had nearly failed her, and the recovery was less about her resilience than about the small specific things that had, by accident, gone right. An earlier rescue piece on a similar case covers a parallel storm-drain story; the patterns are, on careful reading, similar.

The broader system, briefly

After Sunday's recovery, Phoenix Animal Care and Control conducted a more systematic survey of the city's storm drain system over the following six months. The public-works department updated the grate-replacement schedule and added a "missing pet" protocol that includes early storm drain inspection. A separate piece on shelter intakes covers the broader pattern; the Shelter Animals Count national database tracks the numbers.

Where Sunday is now, briefly

I sat with the Mendez family in February 2025. Sunday was on her bed in the living room, in good condition. The fence had been repaired. The household's perimeter audit had identified two other gaps that had, on examination, also been there for some time. The storm drain at the corner had been re-grated by the city.

Sunday was, on the family's account, mostly back to her pre-incident behavior, with one specific exception: she would not, in any context, approach a storm drain grate. The avoidance was not a phobic response; it was a clear specific recognition. Mr. Mendez said this was, in some sense, the single thing he was most grateful for in the recovery. The dog had, on her behavioral economy, learned the lesson that the household's perimeter audit had not previously taught. The system, on the available evidence, runs.