Category: Awww

Service Dog Serves as Best Man at Veteran’s Wedding

Gabe’s a little hairier than most guys who serve as the best man at weddings.

The 4-year-old Golden Retriever is not only a service dog for U.S. Army veteran Justin Lansford, but he also served as the best man and ring bearer when Lansford married his longtime girlfriend, Carol Balmes, during a ceremony Saturday at the Bayou Club in Largo, Fla.

“I was behind closed doors but from what I could hear, everyone said, ‘Aww,’ kind of simultaneously,” Balmes told Mashable regarding the wedding guests’ reactions to the furry best man.

At the reception afterward, Gabe “made his rounds of visiting all the tables,” Balmes said.

Wedding photographer Brad Hall told USA TODAY Gabe was one of the most cooperative bridal party members he’s ever worked with.

The best man was “easy, quite frankly, a lot easier than we typically see with groomsmen at most weddings,” Hall said.

While on tour in Afghanistan in 2012, Lansford lost his left leg in an IED explosion. Back at home, he was assigned to Gabe, a recent graduate of the nonprofit Warrior Canine Connection, which provides support dogs for wounded veterans to help them cope with injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“The less I use my wheelchair, the more I need his help in smaller tasks and the more he is there,” Lansford told ABC News in March 2014. “It has been very comforting to know that.

“He helps me with one thing to the next. I can use him as a stable surface to lean on, as I get to and from the ground. If I fall, he’ll come up running next to me and I can use him to push off of to get up off the ground.”

With Gabe at his side last year, Lansford proposed to his high-school sweetheart Balmes on — appropriately enough — Veteran’s Day.

To make a donation to help the Warrior Canine Connection train more support dogs, click here.

Photos via Twitter

Miss Daisy Driving: Watch a Dog Chauffeur a Little Boy [Video]

“Driving Miss Daisy?” Nope, this is “Miss Daisy Driving.”

Daisy, who looks like a West Highland Terrier mix, likes to give her young buddy Oliver a lift in a little red car. A video of the two is going viral, with more than 240,000 views as of this morning.

“Yes, the car is a remote-controlled car which I use to accelerate and stop (neither of them can reach the pedals… Haha),” writes their mom, Jessica Wolf, in the description of the video she posted on YouTube Sept. 30.

In response to doubters, Wolf wrote, “For your information, there is nothing fake about this video. The driver can override the remote by turning the wheel themselves. Daisy loves to stand on the car and move the wheel herself. If you notice, she mostly pushes to the left so the car drives to the left most of the time. So I sometimes will help move the wheel to the right in order to let her move it again to the left herself… and to help them avoid from hitting anything if it is needed.

“Yes, she is really steering it. Hope you enjoy!”

Whether or not you’re convinced it’s Daisy who’s really doing the driving, the video is definitely enjoyable.

Photo via YouTube

Lost Dog and His Pig BFF Safely Back at Home

Petey the pig grew up with two dogs who are his best buddies. In fact, the pig pretty much thinks he’s a dog.

“I have a big backyard, and they run and play together all day,” their pet parent, Willie Landry of Seffner, Fla., told FOX 13. “He plays with the dogs, he eats with the dogs. They all live in the same house.”

After Petey and one of the dogs, K 2, escaped through a fence in that big backyard Tuesday, the other dog was “moping around without them,” Landry, said. He told FOX 13 he looked everywhere for the escapees.

Happily, K 2 and Petey are safely back at home, mostly thanks to the efforts of Bunny Laite of the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center, who found the two, and the Lost and Found Pets of Hillsborough County Facebook page, which posted their photos.

Alba Jimenez saw the photos of the odd couple and left comments on the Facebook page saying she recognized them as pets belonging to Landry, her neighbor. Meanwhile, FOX 13 aired a news story about the two.

“This morning, people started calling me, saying they’re on TV. Somebody found them,” Landry told FOX 13, choking up. He said he was surprised Petey and K 2 had managed to wander so far from home.

“They’re family,” he said. “I’m just glad to have them back home.”

Hopefully Landry will get the fence fixed soon — and get K 2 fixed as well. Male dogs that haven’t been neutered tend to roam more, according to the ASPCA.

Arf Aboard! Elderly Man Builds Train for His Rescued Dogs [Video]

Not only have 80-year-old Eugene Bostick and his 87-year-old brother Corky rescued every dog who’s been dumped on their dead-end street in Fort Worth, Texas, but Eugene hand-built a train for his nine former strays and takes them on a 90-minute ride around town twice every week.

Photos and a video of the dog train in action are going viral.

“I started out with my tractor. I had a little trailer and I put four or five dogs in there and took them riding,” Eugene told NBC DFW last year. “Then more dogs started to show up and I said, ‘Uh-oh! That’s not enough room!’”

He got the inspiration for the train after he saw a tractor with carts attached to carry rocks.

“I thought, ‘Dang, that would do for a dog train,’” Eugene told The Dodo this week. “I’m a pretty good welder, so I took these plastic barrels with holes cut in them, and put wheels under them and tied them together.”

The passengers “bark a lot. Then they get tired and just stop and look around,” Eugene told NBC DFW.

The Bostick brothers have lived on their 13-acre property for more than 70 years.

“People sometimes come by and dump dogs out here, leaving them to starve,” Eugene told The Dodo. “So, we started feeding them, letting them in, taking them to the vet to get them spayed and neutered. We made a place for them to live.”

Corky told NBC DFW he’s been feeding the wildlife for over 30 years, “and I’m going to live another 30. My wife said if I didn’t get up and do this, I’d be dead. And I really would.”

As for Eugene, he said he’ll be driving the dog train for as long as he can.

Here’s hoping these amazing brothers really do live at least another 30 years.

Photo via Facebook

Reporter Reunites Senior Lab with Elderly Dog Dad after California Wildfire

As the so-called Valley Fire wildfire raced toward his Lower Lake, Calif., home six days ago, 76-year-old Lawrence Ross had little time to evacuate.

He grabbed what he could, but had to leave behind his senior Black Lab, Thumper.

“I think my house is okay, but I don’t know, and my dog is there, and my goats and horses and alpacas,” Ross tearfully told Associated Press reporter Brian Skoloff yesterday at an evacuation center.

“My dog, my dog.”

Ross said he’d had a nightmare that his house was burning down, “and I could hear her screaming as she burned.”

Skoloff asked Ross to show him where his house was on a map. The reporter then drove 10 miles, past burned terrain and downed power lines, to the address. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

The grounds around the house were burned, but the house was still standing.

“Two horses grazed on hay in the yard. The alpacas stared at me from their pen. Goats scurried about like nothing had happened,” Skoloff wrote. “But there was no sign of Thumper.”

For an hour, Skoloff walked around the property, calling out Thumper’s name. The dog finally appeared, covered in soot and wagging her tail. She had been hiding in a crawlspace under the house.

“She leaped into my lap, licked my face, then rolled over on her back as I rubbed her belly and I cried,” Skoloff wrote.

“‘Good girl, Thumper!’ I kept telling her. ‘You made it!'”

There were more tears when the reporter called Ross to tell him the good news.

Skoloff drove Thumper to the evacuation center to be reunited with her dog dad.

“I barely had the back door open when Thumper pushed her way out and ran toward him, her entire body wagging now,” he wrote.

“I can’t believe it,” Ross kept saying.

Here are some ways you can help pets displaced by the devastating wildfires in Northern California.

Photo via Facebook

 

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