The dog’s name is Duke, not Toto, and he lives in North Carolina, not Kansas — but the tornado this 12-year-old Australian Shepherd experienced was a little like something out of “The Wizard of Oz.”
When the tornado passed through Davie County three weeks ago, Duke was “picked up in the mass of the swirling wind, picked up and tossed just like a rag doll,” his dog dad, Lewis Vannoy, told WREG.
Duke was thrown about 1,000 feet, landing in a pasture. Miraculously, the senior dog survived the ordeal. He did have major injuries, including a broken leg and damaged retina, but the lucky guy is expected to make a full recovery. (Amazingly, so is Vannoy’s horse, who was also picked up by the twister.)
Vannoy is thankful to still have Duke and his horse, although his house was pretty much destroyed in just 35 seconds, he said.
“I’ll build another house and we will make more memories,” Vannoy told WREG.
Keep Your Dog Safe During a Tornado
Vannoy urges everyone to take cover, with your pets, when there’s a tornado warning, which seems like really solid advice.
Just over a year ago, as KPRC reporter Phil Archer, Sheriff Troy E. Nehls and three others rode an airboat down a flooded street in Rosenberg, Texas, Nehls was shocked by what he spotted.
Someone had tied their dog to their front porch and left her there. She was now struggling to keep her head above the rapidly rising water.
Archer and Nehls were accompanied in the airboat by photographer Jeovany Luna and volunteers Richard Allen and Jeff Shimek.
With Luna’s camera rolling, Archer and Shimek jumped out and rescued the poor dog just minutes before she would have drowned.
“This is infuriating,” wrote Sheriff Troy E. Nehls, who was also on the airboat, on his Facebook page. “These residents will get a visit from me when they return.”
The heroes took the dog to the Houston Humane Society, which named her “Archer” in the reporter’s honor. Then the heroes returned to their airboat and rescued even more stranded dogs.
Archer’s owner, Mario Gallardo, told KPRC he didn’t realize how high the water would rise when he tied his dog to the porch and left her there — and he didn’t bother to tell authorities that he’d left his dog behind. Tragically, hundreds of pets and other animals died in the devastating flooding last year caused by the historic rising of the Brazos River.
Sheriff Nehls officially adopted Archer not long after the rescue. “I am happy to say the only water this girl will be in now is the swimming pool in my backyard!” he wrote on his Facebook page at the time.
Yesterday, for the first time since June 2016, Archer was reunited with her namesake rescuer.
“One year after the devastating Brazos River floods, Archer the dog continues to be a ray of light to all she meets,” Archer (the reporter, that is) wrote in a KPRC article about their reunion.
“Her survival was a small ray of good news in a bad time, and after almost dying, she is now thriving as a cherished member of Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls’ family.”
Grab a tissue or three and enjoy their happy reunion.
Protect Your Pet During Floods
Monica Schmidt, with the Houston Humane Society, told KPRC it’s as important to prepare your pets for big storms as it is to prepare yourself. She offered these helpful tips:
Make sure your pet is microchipped and your contact information on it is up to date.
Have a pet first aid kit.
Have a “go bag” with extra pet food and toys in it.
Have a crate and make sure your pet is trained to go in it “so that they’re not going to freak out,” Schmidt said.
It’s not that unusual for firefighters to rescue cats who become stuck in trees, but yesterday they met the challenge of freeing a Dachshund stuck inside a tree trunk in Salem, Ky.
Apparently little Rocco had managed to get inside the tree via a groundhog hole.
He’d probably still be stuck there if two off-duty Kentucky State Troopers hadn’t heard his barks as they mowed the lawn at a nearby cemetery.
Sergeant Michael Williams and Trooper Gerick Sullivan searched a wooded area until they spotted Rocco sticking his head out of his strange location. Unable to free the Doxie themselves, they called the Salem Fire Department.
Firefighter Daniel Newcomb carefully cut out part of the tree so Rocco could be removed from it and reunited with his grateful owner. The tree opening was also made larger just in case another dog ever found themselves in the same predicament.
“Never seen a tree with so much bark…😉,” wrote Sophie Bourdeau.
Hats off to Williams, Sullivan and Newcomb for saving Rocco. I’m betting that little Dachshund won’t be going anywhere near another groundhog hole for a long, long time.
And speaking of dogs stuck in trees, last year rescuers saved Kora, a 120-pound Great Dane who’d managed to climb 20 feet (!) up a tree in Nebraska.
As an episode of the Hulu series “Chance” was being filmed on a downtown Los Angeles street the morning of May 26, something horribly dramatic happened off camera. An off-duty LAPD motorcycle officer, who was working as a security guard on the film set, shot and killed a pet dog.
The unidentified cop was working on South Main Street when he got into an argument with Emry Zumreet and was attacked by his “aggressive” Pit Bull — or at least that’s the story from LAPD spokeswoman Jenny Hauser, according to the Los Angeles Times.
LAPD Sgt. Barry Montgomery concurs with Hauser. “A dog belonging to that suspect became aggressive and attacked our officer, and it was at that time that an officer-involved shooting occurred,” he told CBS Los Angeles. The officer was taken to a hospital for minor injuries.
But Zumreet’s attorney and an apparent eyewitness to the shooting tell quite a different story.
“I live in the building above where this happened, the officer was completely fine,” wrote camjameson in a comment on the L.A. Times story.
“At least 100 people from the surrounding buildings were yelling about the incident, having seen it themselves, and everyone claims the officer was not attacked, but that the dog was just growling,” according to camjameson. “This is some cover up if I’ve ever seen it. Your gun should never be your first option in a threatening situation, there are so many other options, especially against a mid-sized dog and a super scrawny dude in a wife-beater with no visible weapons. Shameful.”
According to Ben Meiselas, Zumreet’s attorney, this is what happened:
As Zumreet drove down South Main Street, the LAPD officer stopped traffic due to the TV shoot. Zumreet got into some kind of argument with the officer, and the officer opened the car door. When Zumreet stepped out of his car, the officer pulled out a handgun. Zumreet’s dog jumped out of the car through the open door, and the officer shot him.
“He executed the dog because it was a Pit Bull,” Meiselas told the Los Angeles Times. He said witnesses have come forward to say the shooting was unnecessary.
Another witness, Nelson Aguilar, told KCAL9 he heard two men yelling and then two gunshots. He recorded the rest of what he saw on his cell phone.
“And I saw the dog, and the dog had been shot, and it was squirming on the floor,” he said. “And I saw the owner, and the owner was yelling, talking about, ‘You killed my dog.'”
Aguilar said the Zumreet was arrested after he kept going into the roped-off area, “hugging his dog.” Meiselas told the Times Zumreet called the LAPD for help before he was arrested. According to KCAL9, police haven’t decided whether any charges will be pressed against him.
Hopefully security cameras in the area recorded what really happened. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
Coincidentally, the series “Chance” that was filming near the shooting is about a forensic neuropsychiatrist (Hugh Laurie) who’s pulled into “a violent and dangerous world of mistaken identity, police corruption and mental illness,” according to Hulu.
Preventing ‘Puppycide’
It’s a horrible statistic, but more than 10,000 pet dogs are shot by police officers in this country every year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. There’s even a term for it: “puppycide.”
To prevent this, some police departments are training their officers how to deal with scared or agitated pets in non-lethal ways.
In response to the shocking, viral 2013 video of a Hawthorne, Calif., police officer shooting a Rottweiler named Max as his owner begged him not to, spcaLA began offering the class, “Dog Behavior for Law Enforcement” to all police departments in California.
In 2013, Colorado became the first state to pass a “Dog Protection Act,” which requires similar training for law enforcement officers. Two years later, Texas enacted a law that required the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to establish a statewide comprehensive training program in dog encounters.
These programs are a good start, but as those sad statistics make clear, teaching law enforcement officers how to humanely deal with dogs should be required in every state.
Over the past few years, service dogs who accompany students and teachers to school have earned their rightful place among the class photos in yearbooks. This really cool trend continues this year with Alpha, the service dog for Andrew “A.J.” Schalk, a junior at Stafford High School in Falmouth, Va.
Ever since Alpha was only 4 months old, the black Lab, now 3, has been assisting Schalk as a diabetes detection dog.
“The amazing thing about Alpha is that he knows 20 to 40 minutes before my blood sugar actually does go low or high due to his amazing sense of smell,” Schalk, who has type 1 diabetes, told Buzzfeed News. “He has saved my life multiple times already, by waking me up in the middle of the night to extremely low blood sugars, which are very dangerous.”
Schalk asked the yearbook staff if his lifesaver’s photo could be included, and they were all totally on board with it. So Schalk brought Alpha along when he got his own picture taken.
“The only thing they changed was the camera height,” he told Buzzfeed News. “They just had to lower it a little, ha ha.” (Maybe next year they can lower it just a little bit more, LOL.)
“Where you see A.J., you see Alpha, and he’s just one of the gang,” the school principal, Joseph Lewis, told NBC Washington.
“He has been a great companion and added a lot of happiness to my school’s environment,” Schalk told Buzzfeed News. “It brightens people’s days seeing him in the halls or in my class and I love being able to have that effect on people.”
Class of 2016
Last year a photo of Presley, a 5-year-old Goldendoodle, appeared next to that of Seph Ware in the yearbook for Good Hope Middle School in West Monroe, La.
Ware, now 15, has had Duchenne muscular dystrophy since he was 3 years old and is confined to a wheelchair. While Ware was attending middle school, Presley helped him by picking up things he dropped, turning on lights, opening drawers and performing other tasks in the classroom and at home.
School officials came up with the idea of including Presley’s photo in the yearbook.
“Seph says that it took about 10 minutes to get Presley to look at the camera — and who knows how many shots,” his mom, Lori Ware, told AL.com.
After Presley’s yearbook photo was shared on Facebook, it went viral.
“We’re kind of stunned at all the attention,” Lori Ware told FoxNews.com. “It’s humbling. I’m glad Presley is making the world happy.”
Caramel is a service dog belonging to Rebecca Thomas, who is hearing impaired and teaches American sign language at Blaine High. For the previous 10 years, Caramel had joined her in class.
Dakota, a certified therapy dog, belongs to Vicky Camancho, who teaches a special education class at the school and brings in Dakota once a week.
“The students love seeing the service dogs in the yearbook,” Thomas told Yahoo Canada.
Including the two dogs in the yearbook started in 2013, when Dakota’s photo was taken for an identification badge on class picture day.
“When we got the disc of student and staff photos, we automatically flowed the pictures into the yearbook page sections,” Faculty Adviser Jill Farrell told the Star Tribune. “The editors and I giggled like mad when we saw that a picture of Dakota was included in the images.”
Lynn Florman, head of the special education department, told Yahoo Canada the photos send a positive message.
“Sometimes the unique services they provide are not understood or valued by others, so seeing them recognized in such a public and memorable way as a yearbook sends a strong message to all that they are an integral part of the team that supports our students,” Florman said.
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