Rescued Beagle Takes 20-Mile Ride on Sideboard of Dog Dad’s Ambulance

Feel free to call a rescued Beagle mix named Buddy an ambulance chaser.

Buddy’s dog dad, 85-year-old JR Nicholson of Mason County, Texas, began feeling dizzy while working on his ranch last month. He asked ranch hand Brian Wright to call 911.

Emergency medical technicians loaded Nicholson into an ambulance and headed for a hospital in Fredericksburg, more than an hour’s drive away.

After they had traveled about 20 miles, a driver caught their attention. There’s a dog on the sideboard, the driver told them.

“It was kind of weird,” Tanner Brown, one of the EMTs, told the San Angelo Standard-Times. “I guess the dog wanted to be with his owner.”

Apparently. And it was kind of a miracle that Buddy had somehow managed not to fall off the ambulance’s narrow sideboard.

“We didn’t have anything else to do but to load the dog up and put him in the ambulance, and take him to the ER with us,” Brown said. Once inside the ambulance, he said Buddy “jumped onto the control switch, and turned on the sirens and the lights.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Wright was becoming concerned when Buddy — who enjoys roaming the property and riding on the tractor — seemed to have disappeared. Wright closed up the ranch and drove to the hospital, where he found out Buddy was safe and sound.

“Two things go through your mind in a split second,” he told the Standard-Times. “First, what could have happened to (Buddy), and second, you realize he is quite an animal.”

Most relieved of all is Nicholson, who adopted Buddy from a shelter just four months ago. During Nicholson’s overnight stay at the hospital, nurses brought him out to see his devoted dog.

“I was impressed,” Nicholson told the Standard-Times. “He didn’t have to go to the hospital with me, but he did.”

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