Posts tagged "DogRescue"

No one with a shred of decency likes to see an animal harmed or abused, but everyone likes to see an abused animal rescued and rehabilitated. That's why this video generated a lot of buzz yesterday on Reddit. It tells the story of Judith, a beautiful dog who was horrifically abused and neglected for most her life. It's from the Animal Advocates Society in Vancouver, and it tells the story of Judith, an unfortunate dog who spent the first 10 years of her life chained in a muddy backyard. Be warned, the first minute and a half of this video is very difficult to watch, as it depicts the deplorable conditions under which Judith was kept. But it goes on to show how the Animal Advocates Society rescued her and finally gave her a happy life after so long. This one's a tearjerker, folks.

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

Last weekend, we took Pippi for a pleasant trip to the dog park. (Unlike the last time we went, there was not a brawl, so that was a plus.) While there, we struck up a conversation with a woman who had brought her 4-year-old golden retriever. After hearing we'd gotten Pippi from a rescue, the woman imparted that she, too, had tried to obtain a dog through this method. The problem was that she couldn't pass the screening test!

The woman had had her heart set on a golden, and the rescue in question had plenty of them, but they weren't sure she and her husband were a good match. They wanted a lot of veterinary references (something which doesn't seem strange to me, considering I was asked for vet contact info going all the way back to the '90s), but they also wanted to know this woman and her husband's work schedules. She worked normal hours, while he worked from noon to nine on most days. Therefore, someone would be home with the dog all day except for the afternoon. Not so terrible, considering that many folks crate their dogs all day, right?

Rescuing puppies isn't for the faint of heart. Case in point, the daring puppy rescue that Zak Anderegg carried out while rappelling into one of Utah's slot canyons.

Two weeks ago, Anderegg set out to explore the scenic Arizona-Utah border when he came upon a shocking site: an animal trapped at the bottom of one of the region's famous deep and narrow canyons. Looking over the canyon's edge, Anderegg thought the animal might have been a small calf. "And then the longer I looked at him, I realized he's actually a dog," Anderegg told "Today." An animal lover, Anderegg was exactly the right person at the right place and time to help save the pup's life.

Anderegg called his wife and told her his new mission. "When I saw him, my heart just absolutely broke," Zak said. "Within about 10 seconds of realizing what he was, my plan shifted from vacation to rescue." Without hesitation, Anderegg left the canyon to round up some help in a nearby town. He returned with food, water, and a cat carrier donated by the local animal hospital.

Anderegg rappelled back down the canyon to feed the stranded dog, but it seemed unable to even eat. Estimating that the stranded animal was only "24 to 48 hours away from death," Anderegg placed the puppy in the borrowed cat carrier and hoisted him all 350 feet up and out of the canyon, using his climbing ropes and a pulley.

All over the country, shelters provide not only a safe haven for homeless animals but also offer critical veterinary care, rehabilitation and most importantly, love. In Paw Nation's newest column, Rescue Tales, we will share with you the stories of these amazing organizations and some of the fortunate pets who have gone on to find permanent, happy homes.

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BARC: Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition - Brooklyn, N.Y.
BARC is a no-kill shelter in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. Originally started in 1987 as a pet-supplies store, which is still the cornerstone of BARC, the two owners found themselves taking care of rescued animals brought to them by neighborhood residents. BARC grew into a non-profit shelter for dogs and cats and are in part funded by all the proceeds from the pet store. Their adoption fee is $150, which includes shots, spaying/neutering and, for dogs, micro-chipping.

Petunia -- Elderly Pooch Saved from a NYC Expressway
This shih tzu, was around 13 years old when she arrived at BARC after being found on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The dog needed immediate medical attention for her severe malnourishment, eye problems, and hip pain. For weeks after being rescued, she remained lethargic and unresponsive until she finally gained some weight, got a great haircut and suddenly had a little more pep in her step. Still only able to walk a few blocks, the dog who is now called Petunia had also been diagnosed with lymphoma, and the staff at BARC prepared for her to live out her last days with them at the shelter.

That was when an older woman named Verna, who herself had trouble walking long distances, came to BARC and fell in love with this cute pooch. Coordinators at BARC counseled Verna on dealing with Petunia's health issues, walking the dog and how to introduce her to Verna's other dog. Four months later, Petunia is eating voraciously and can be seen prancing around with Verna on the other end of her leash.

After wandering from her home outside Buffalo, 8-year-old Koozie was rescued five days later and some 30 miles away after someone spotted a dog stranded on the ice on freezing Lake Erie. The Erie County Air One helicopter responded and a fireman was lowered in a basket and scooped Koozie up. But the minute she was on dry land, Koozie got away and ran back onto the lake, needing a second rescue.

The story ends happily with the dog back safe in the arms of her grateful owner Phil Frost, who had been looking for his mixed-breed dog since she went missing -- and first knew she'd been found when he saw the rescue on the local news.

Fortunately Koozie's only injury was a broken nail.

Spikey, the dog who captured national headlines when he was airlifted from a Los Angeles river in a daring helicopter rescue is finally home. The 4-year-old German-shepherd mix was in quarantine for several days before being released and reunited with his owners, the Los Angeles Times reported.

On Friday, Jan. 22, viewers were glued to their television screens when news stations broadcast live coverage of a dog being rescued by the Los Angeles Fire Department from a surging river. The video from Fox 11 News shows firefighter Joe St. Georges, 50, dropping from a helicopter into the river, grabbing the struggling dog and airlifting him to safety -- but not before dangling high above the river for several long, nail-biting moments.

"We got reports of a dog in the Los Angeles River, which is really a concrete-walled flood control channel," Los Angeles Fire Captain Steve Ruda tells Paw Nation. The dog couldn't climb out of the river, which was extra-high due to heavy rains that had been flooding Los Angeles all week.

"The incident commander made a decision to rescue the dog," explains Capt. Ruda. "It was wearing a collar and appeared to belong to somebody. If we did nothing, we were concerned that humans trying to rescue the dog would be harmed." A helicopter swift water rescue team swooped in under high tension wires and lowered firefighter St. Georges into the river. "Joe [St. Georges] was able to capture the dog, put a capture strap around it, and get the dog to safety," Capt. Ruda says.

Billy King is ready to buy his dog, Skip, a big bag of dog food after the dog barked to warn him of a fire on the other side of his duplex, reports KansasCity.com. The early warning was particularly important in this case because the Kansas man uses a wheelchair and had to call his son for help.

King tells KansasCity.com that he awoke to his dog's warning around 4:30 a.m. Firefighters and his son helped him out of his home, at which point the windows started to break from the heat of the fire.

Something tells us Skip is going to get more than a bit of extra dog food -- do they even make dog treats tasty enough to show this kind of appreciation?

I am sitting with actress Linda Blair in the back yard of her WorldHeart Foundation animal sanctuary, at the base of a mountain in the high desert of Southern California, just outside of Los Angeles. A worker walks by with a great, big, beautiful mutt. "That's Hank," Blair says, indicating the big dog. "He came from a hoarder. His teeth were filed down." I ask her why someone would want to file down a dog's teeth. She tells me it's done to prevent dogs from damaging each other when tossed into packs. Hank's former owner had filed down the big dog's teeth in a shed in the back of his property, without any medical supervision. But the big dog seems happy now as he shows me his smile.

Blair began rescuing dogs in 1997, following the death of her mother and two pets. Though devastated by her loss, she focused her grief into achieving something positive. "I started walking [into] shelters and rescuing anywhere from two to five dogs, putting them in a kennel, going every day to walk them and take care of them. I made signs and fliers and put them up at pet stores, handed them out. All that and working."

"Lost dog reunited with little girl": It's a story we've heard time and time again. While it's always touching, this particular reunion story, shared this morning on the "Today Show", has a little more drama than some.

When Mollie, a German short-haired pointer, didn't come home one night, her family was understandably worried. Four-year-old Olivia Hartzog and her father, James, could hear Mollie barking, but they didn't realize until morning that she was barking from the bottom of a 33-foot dry well on their property, reports MSNBC.

Olivia asked her father to just jump down and get her dog, but he knew it was more complicated than that. Instead, local volunteer firefighter-rescuer Dwight Williams went into the well and Mollie, who emerged unscathed, but understandably elated to see her family. But no one was as thrilled to see Mollie as Olivia. Her father told Ann Curry in an interview that she's hardly left the dog's side. "Every chance she gets now, she wants to go pet Mollie and love on her and play with her -- and her pups, of course."

As for Williams, it's all in a day's work. Immediately following the rescue, he told the WIS news crew, "We do more than fight fires - we do whatever is required of us, like going down in holes and rescuing dogs."