You hear stories about people saving lives all the time. Well, here are the stories of three heroic pups that saved lives. Two took place just recently, one happened almost 50 years ago.
Sweet Greyhounds
Two months ago, Erin Cramer adopted “Clobberhead” from the Greyhound Pets of America, saying that her and her daughter just knew he was the right dog for them. Just recently, Clobber, as they call him, started behaving very strangely. He went to the door and pressed his nose against it so hard that he could hardly breathe. Erin put his leash on and took him outside. But he immediately wanted to go back in, pulling Erin strongly behind him.
Once inside, he ran up the stairs to the door of the laundry room. Erin opened the door and the smell of gas came pouring out. It turned out that her water heater was leaking gas, plus it was sparking. If Clobber hadn’t alerted her in time, the spark would have ignited the gas and not only would Erin’s house have exploded, but also the houses around hers.
Erin credits Clobber with saving her life and suggests that people always pay attention to their dog’s behavior.
One for the Pit Bulls
Christie Smith began fostering “Tator Tot”, a 10 month old registered Pit Bull that was scheduled to be put down, just last week. Tator Tot and her 4 year old son, Payton, became close buddies right away. One night Tator Tot started jumping on the sleeping boy, licking him, barking, whining and just generally raising a ruckus.
Christie checked and found that Payton was barely breathing, and rushed him to the emergency room, where they found his blood sugar was dangerously low. A local veterinarian said the dog may have smelled the ketones that would have most likely been being produced by Payton’s low blood sugar.
Whatever Tator Tot’s clue was, Christie credits him with saving her son’s life.
My Girl Dolly
This rescue happened years ago. My Scottish Terrier, Dolly, hardly ever barked, and when she did, it was a very deep, bass sounding bark that didn’t match her “girly-ness”.
One morning, my mom had let her and my cat, Smokey Joe, outside to do their duty. Suddenly, Dolly was jumping on the metal screen door, which made a metallic clang, and barking her throaty bark. It would stop for a few seconds and then it would happen again. The third time it happened, my mom stopped what she was doing and went to see what was going on.
Dolly was running back-and-forth from the street to the door and back again, trying to get someone to come out and see that Smokey had been run over by a car and couldn’t move. We rushed Smokey to the vet, with my mom thinking he would have to be put to sleep. His pelvis was crushed, but the vet wanted to try to save him. He kept Smokey for 2 months, and finally returned him to us, still sore and dragging his back legs for a while, but he eventually got back to normal.
Smokey would have bleed to death internally if not for Dolly doing all that she could to help her best friend out in his time of need.
Has your dog, or a dog you know or have heard about, ever saved a life, or alerted you to something important?
