Heroes Archives - Page 12 of 30

Watch a Hero Use a Plastic Bottle to Revive a Puppy That Almost Drowned

His name isn’t MacGyver, but a motorcyclist showed similar unconventional problem-solving skills to save the life of a puppy that almost drowned.

Hoang Minh, 21, was riding his motorcycle along a road in southern Vietnam when he spotted the unconscious puppy floating in a river. He immediately stopped and pulled the puppy, whose body was still warm, out of the water.

With his helmet camera turned on, Minh vigorously rubbed the puppy’s belly in an effort to revive him. He wiped the puppy’s face with a tissue and checked inside his mouth to make sure he hadn’t swallowed his tongue. So far, so good.

Minh then cut off the bottom of a plastic water bottle and lined it with a tissue. He placed it over the puppy’s head while breathing into the neck of the bottle.

His ingenious makeshift device worked. After just a few breaths, the puppy stirred and opened his eyes. He was soon up on his wobbly feet.

“After taking the puppy from the water, I was very confused and just did what I did without thinking,” Minh told Vietnamese media, according to The Mirror. “I didn’t actually know the proper paramedic procedure.”

Should you ever have to revive an unconscious dog and there’s no water bottle nearby, you can perform artificial respiration by holding the dog’s jaw tightly closed and breathing into his nose. For smaller dogs, you may be able to cover both their nose and mouth with your mouth and breathe into them. Here are the recommended step-by-step instructions to follow from petMD.com.

The puppy’s whereabouts are unknown, The Mirror reports. Here’s hoping Minh, the hero who saved his life, is now his official dog dad.

Hero Pomeranian Stays by Blind Chihuahua’s Side During House Fire

When Lily Ifield of Hertfordshire, England, looked out her bedroom window in the middle of the night earlier this month, she thought the thick smoke she saw was fog.

But when she went downstairs, she realized the smoke was coming from inside her house.

“I thought my home was going to explode. There was just this big billowing cloud of black smoke,” she Daily Express, describing a house fire earlier this month. “All I thought was, ‘Oh my God,’ and ran out. I couldn’t really see as there was smoke everywhere.”

Ifield, 73, and Sandy, her 10-year-old Pomeranian, managed to escape outside, but Sandy noticed somebody was missing.

It was Tina, a blind, 13-year-old Chihuahua who is Sandy’s best friend.

To Ifield’s horror, Sandy ran back into the burning house. “The fireman couldn’t believe Sandy went in to the smoke-filled house to look for the little one,” Ifield told the Daily Express. “He said when he came in, they were both sitting side by side in the kitchen, and Sandy was looking after her.”

Firefighters from the Stortford Fire and Rescue Service were able to save the two dogs.

“We got them out before there was a chance for them to be affected by smoke inhalation,” one of their rescuers, Pat Steadman, told the Daily Express. “The 13-year-old one was the smallest chihuahua you’ve ever seen. They were only going to come out together.”

Ifield’s parrot, Rio, also survived the blaze by flying out of the house. The fire was believed to be caused by an electrical issue in the kitchen. Ifield and her pets are temporarily staying in a hotel while repairs are made to their home.

“The firefighters did a brilliant job to make sure everyone was okay,” Ifield told the Hertfordshire Mercury. “They are so kind — I just want to thank them so much.”

Tina and her hero Sandy were already BFFs before the fire. But now? “They are even closer, and they just cuddle up to each other,” Ifield told the Daily Express.

Photo (of a random Pomeranian who isn’t Sandy): OpenRoadPR

Laika, First Dog Astronaut, Made a One-Way Space Trip 60 Years Ago

Sixty years ago, people around the world were enamored with Laika (Russian for “Barker”), a 2-year-old Moscow street dog, who became the first dog to orbit the Earth when Sputnik 2 launched on Nov. 3, 1957. It wasn’t until Laika was well on her way aboard Sputnik 2 that Russian officials disclosed the terrible truth: it was a one-way mission.

“Laika was quiet and charming,” wrote Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky, who took the “cosmomutt,” as she was called by pundits, home to play with his children before her ill-fated trip. “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.”

When people found out that sweet little Laika was doomed to die alone and scared, they were outraged.

“The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals averted complete telephone paralysis only when a quick-thinking operator urged all callers to ‘make your protest direct to the Soviet embassy,’” Time reported in November 1957.

In a desperate attempt at damage control, First Secretary Yuri Modin insisted that Russians loved dogs. “This has been done not for the sake of cruelty but for the benefit of humanity,” he stated, according to Time.

Speaking of cruelty, it wasn’t easy for Laika even before the capsule was launched into space. Because of a technical problem, she had to sit in the cockpit for three days on the launch pad. As the temperature dropped, workers heated the capsule using a hose.

According to the official story at the time, Laika survived for a week in space before she was euthanized by a programmed injection. As terrible as that sounds, the end of her life was actually much worse.

At the 2002 World Space Congress, people involved in the project revealed what had really happened. Laika had access to food and water, but she was chained so she couldn’t turn around. Just a few hours after the capsule was launched, she died of overheating and stress.

Laika wasn’t the only dog who died on a Russian space mission. Of the 12 dogs that succeeded her, five died. Finally, in 1960, two dogs named Belka and Strelka made it safely to space and back again.

The last dogs sent to space were Verterok and Ugolyok, who spent 22 days in orbit in 1966. Ever since then, dogs have stayed where they belong – here on Earth.

This story was originally published on Care2.com.

Photo: By user Neozoon, Public Domain

With Her Pit Bull in a Duffel Bag, Woman Escapes California Wildfire on a Bicycle

Natasha Wallace wasn’t about to flee from a devastating wildfire in Santa Rosa, Calif., without Bentley, her beloved 4-year-old Pit Bull.

“I would never part ways with my dog, ever,” she told FOX40. “That’s my ride or die — oh my God, literally.”

Wallace, a student at Santa Rosa Junior College, had been studying across town Monday night. As she drove home around 2 a.m., she could see the flames near her home and knew she’d have to evacuate.

She managed to put Bentley in her car and tried to drive away from the fast-moving fire, but got stuck in traffic. So she ran back to her house and grabbed her bicycle and a duffel bag, which became a sidecar for Bentley.

“I told him, ‘Hey man, this is serious, you need to just sit in the bag,'” Wallace told FOX40. “And he hopped right in.”

Carrying her 70-pound dog, she was able to ride her bike a few miles away from the fire. Fortunately, a good Samaritan named Paul Johnson stopped his pickup truck and gave Wallace and Bentley a lift to a safe evacuation area.

Unfortunately, Wallace — who turned 24 yesterday — lost her home and everything she owned, but thanks to her quick actions, she and her beloved Pittie survived.

“I don’t even know how to express how grateful I am,” she told FOX40.

Here’s how to help pets left homeless by the devastating wildfires in Northern California.

San Bernardino Detectives Rescue Stolen Puppy and Drive Him Home

When a dog breeder and buyer met in the parking lot of a San Bernardino, Calif., supermarket earlier this month, the sale of a puppy didn’t go at all as the breeder had planned.

“The alleged buyer took the puppy, pushed the breeder and ran,” San Bernardino police Lt. Mike Madden told the Sun.

After the breeder contacted the police, two detectives were able to track down the puppynapper in the High Desert. According to a Facebook post, the thief was in the process of reselling the puppy when the detectives intervened.

The detectives rescued the stolen puppy, who appears to be a Pit Bull, and, as you can see in these photos, drove him back to the breeder.

The Sun reports that the puppynapper has not yet been charged with any crime, which seems odd. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is currently reviewing the robbery case.

With so many stories of cops shooting dogs for no reason, it’s reassuring to know there are compassionate people in law enforcement who do the right thing and truly care about animals.

However…are Pit Bull breeders doing the right thing by raising and selling these dogs? With so many Pit Bulls in animal shelters, in my opinion, the answer is no.

If you’re thinking about getting a Pit Bull or any other breed of dog, please consider adopting one from a shelter or rescue instead of buying one from a breeder. In my own experience with dogs from breeders and shelters, it really doesn’t matter which they came from. And by adopting a shelter or rescue pet, remember that you’re potentially saving two lives: that of your new family member as well as the dog who will now be able to take his place in the shelter — and hopefully be just as lucky.

Photo via Facebook/San Bernardino Police Department