England Archives - i Still Love Dogs

Raise the ‘Woof?’: Scared Dog Rescued from Top of Roof

Imagine walking up to your house and seeing your dog happy to greet you…from up on the roof.

That’s what happened this week to a family in Helston, a town in Cornwall, England. Cathryn and Phil Wood left their Cockapoo, Maple, home alone with Phil’s parents’ dog, Tammy, a Sprocker Spaniel, when the four went out for tea on July 20.

As they were walking home about an hour later, they saw Maple running down the main street.

“We picked her up and as we got closer to home, there was a fire engine outside,” Cathryn told Cornwall Live. “I thought there had been a fire, but as we got closer, we saw a crowd of people and Tammy was on the roof.”

The two dogs had apparently climbed on bedroom furniture and out a window on the roof. Maple had somehow been able to make her way down to the street.

“Maple had already jumped down but Tammy was too scared. She was petrified,” Cathryn told Cornwall Live. “They’ve never done anything like this before. She’s escaped over the fence before but she’s never gone onto the roof.”

It wasn’t the firefighters but Phil’s step-dad, Steve, who was able to rescue Tammy by climbing out the window and urging her to come back inside.

During the rescue, a neighbor sang, “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

“It’s lucky that no one was injured and that there was no fire,” Cathryn told Cornwall Live. She said the bedroom window is left open because the attic gets so hot, but from now on, the bedroom door will be kept closed.

The family expressed their gratitude for the Helston Fire Station. “We want to thank them very much for their speedy timing coming, and say sorry,” Catherine told The Packet. “We are a bit embarrassed!”

Speaking of amazing four-legged escape artists, while none of our dogs has ever ended up on the roof, our Pit Bull mix Sophie did manage to make her way inside the house after I left her in the backyard while I ran a quick errand. We had just adopted her and she was still recovering from being spayed the day before. Imagine my surprise when she greeted me at the front door, even though the back door was still closed and locked!

Sophie had climbed up on boxes in a storage area outside a bedroom casement window (the kind that swing out) that had been left slightly open. She managed to squeeze in through that opening and into the house. Fortunately, she wasn’t injured and didn’t chew up anything in the house.

Here’s the video of Tammy’s rescue. Nice work, Phil’s step-dad!

Photo: SWNS/YouTube

Baaa-d Job? Border Collie Herder-in-Training Leads Sheep into House

Rocky, a seven-month-old Border Collie puppy, is just getting his paws wet at the art of herding sheep.

So perhaps his owner, Rosalyn Edwards of Devon, England, shouldn’t have been too surprised at what she found inside her home late last month.

“I was in the kitchen and heard a noise,” Edwards told The Telegraph. “I turned around and the sheep were just standing there. There were about nine of them.”

The sight of all those sheep inside her house was pretty hilarious, but the mess they made? Not so much. “There was quite a lot of wee, poo and mud everywhere,” Edwards said. “It took me a little while to clean it all up.”

How did the sheep end up inside her house? Edwards, her husband and her son had gone out into a field, inadvertently leaving a gate open behind them. Being a super smart Border Collie, young Rocky quickly took advantage of the situation and led the sheep into the house through a back door.

Thank goodness for smart phones — Edwards was able to record the video below of the sheep inside her house, which has been viewed more than 92,000 times on Facebook.

Edwards put her children in another room, and she and her husband were able to successfully shoo the sheep out the front door.

As for Rocky, he was very pleased with himself, Edwards said. After all, how many herding dogs have the skills to lead sheep inside houses?

“He brought a whole new meaning to ‘bringing the sheep home,’” she told The Telegraph.

Photo via Rosalyn Edwards/Facebook

Monsters out on Bail After Burying Dog Alive with Nail in His Head

March 31, 2017 Update: Michael Heathcock and Richard Finch both pleaded guilty March 1 to the despicable cruelty they inflicted on that poor dog, whose name was Scamp. Each received a sentence of only four months in prison. They also had to pay about $400 in fines and, fortunately, are no longer allowed to have pets.

Heathcock was Scamp’s owner. He said he thought killing Scamp was the right thing to do because the dog was going deaf and blind, and becoming incontinent.

More than 100 people showed up at a March 31 memorial for Scamp. It was led by Reverend Margery Grange, who told GazetteLive, “We do animal blessings quite frequently. We don’t normally do memorials as a rule for dogs, but this is a special case.”

“In all my 10 years working for the RSPCA, I have never known anything so horrifying and inexplicably cruel,” said Inspector Nick Jones. A local veterinarian said it was the worst case of cruelty he’d ever seen in his career.

They were referring to a small, fluffy dog — possibly a Jack Russell or West Highland Terrier mix — who was buried alive in Redcar, England. And that wasn’t the worst of it. A large nail had been pounded into the dog’s skull between his eyes.

A couple walking their dogs in the Kirkleatham Woods on Wednesday afternoon made the gruesome discovery.

“My wife said, ‘Listen, there’s a noise,’ but I said it was probably just a frog,” the man told GazetteLive. “Then when we listened more carefully, we could hear a slight grunting noise. I pulled the ivy back, poked about with a stick and saw some gray fur. Then I realized there was a nose in the mud.”

A man working nearby used a spade to dig the dog out of the shallow grave.

“I just couldn’t believe it. How could anyone be that despicable and cruel to do something like that?” the man said.

Although they rushed the poor dog to the closest veterinarian, he had to be euthanized due to his “immense suffering,” the RSPCA reports.

On Friday, two unidentified 59- and 60-year-old men who live in the area were arrested by Cleveland Police and charged with animal cruelty.

But today these two monsters are safe and sound in their homes, because they were both released on bail.

A public vigil for the dog was held this afternoon at the entrance to Kirkleatham Woods.

Meanwhile, Redcar’s MP Anna Turley has condemned the attack. Last summer, she introduced a bill to Parliament, urging tougher sentences for animal abusers. The bill was inspired by the case of two brothers from Redcar, Andrew and Daniel Frankish, who repeatedly threw their Bulldog down the stairs and stomped on her head. The dog became paralyzed and had to be euthanized because of her injuries. The brothers were sentenced to only 21 weeks in prison.

“We saw with the case of Baby the bulldog and the horrific treatment of her by the Frankish brothers that the sentencing for animal cruelty cases does not reflect the severity of the crime,” Turley said. “It is not a deterrent to individuals committing awful crimes like this against animals.”

Hopefully Turley’s bill will be passed, and those two men will spend a lot of time in prison, thinking about what monsters they are.

Photo: RSPCA