For a Great Dane, Kora has some amazing climbing skills.
Her dog dad, Wes McGuirk, couldn’t find her when he returned to his Louisville, Neb., home Saturday night. But he and his roommate, Jack Armstrong, could hear her whimpering in the distance.
“Then all of the sudden we realized it was coming from up there,” Armstrong told KMTV. They shined a flashlight up a tree, and there was Kora looking down at them. She had somehow managed to jump a 5-foot-high fence and climb the tree, perhaps chasing a squirrel or raccoon.
After trying unsuccessfully to get Kora down from the tree, they called the Cass County Sheriff’s Office. The first responders suspected it could be a prank.
“I’ve been doing this job for 12 years and when they told us it was a 120-pound Great Dane, 20 feet up a tree, that math usually doesn’t add up,” Lt. Jon Hardy of the Plattsmouth Volunteer Fire Department told KMTV. “It’s one of those things that will be talked about down here for quite a while, I’m sure,”
Using a rope, ladder and a harness from the Cass County Sheriff’s Office K-9 handler, rescuers from the Plattsmouth Volunteer Fire Department and Elmwood Volunteer Fire and Rescue were able to lower Kora from the tree. But before she reached the ground, the harness broke. Fortunately, some of the firefighters were holding a tarp just in case she fell.
“She never hit the ground,” Hardy told USA TODAY. “It worked like we hoped.”
Kora bounced off the tarp and “trotted away as if she’d never been stuck in a tree,” KMTV reports.
When Maja Kazazic of Palm Harbor, Fla., was living in Bosnia years ago, she was severely injured by a bomb blast that killed all her friends.
The 16-year-old’s left leg became infected and had to be amputated. To her surprise, she was rescued by a stranger and eventually came to the United States.
Yesterday, Kazazic made a rescue of her own. The athlete, entrepreneur and motivational speaker adopted a three-legged Great Dane named Rosie.
Rosie, now 16 months old, was just a puppy when her mother stepped on her and broke her rear right leg. As with Kazazic, Rosie’s leg became infected and had to be partially amputated.
Rosie’s breeder wanted her to be euthanized, but thanks to Kazazic, the Great Dane’s life was spared.
“I felt this instant kinship because I have this affinity for things that are rescued,” Kazazic told FOX 13. “Being a rescued person myself, someone who should have died, it was really an instant connection.”
Kazazic found out about Rosie through the Hanger Clinic, which created her prosthetic leg as well as the prosthetic tail for Winter, the dolphin made famous in the heartwarming 2011 film, “Dolphin Tale” and its 2014 sequel, “Dolphin Tale 2.” *
Rosie’s veterinarian contacted the Hanger Clinic after the dog’s leg was amputated. Clinician Peter DiPaolo told FOX 13 the vet knew about the prosthetic dolphin tail. “He asked, ‘Can you guys make a prosthetic leg for a dog?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.'”
The personalities of the dolphin and dog were similar, DiPaolo said. “They were both kids when they first were fit, and we’re going to see her all along the way,” he told FOX 13.
DiPaolo called Kazazic, who’d wanted a Great Dane since she was a young girl, and told her about Rosie.
“He said, ‘You’ve got to meet Rosie, you guys would be perfect,’ and I said, ‘Who’s Rosie?,’” Kazazic told FOX 13. “He said, ‘She’s a Great Dane that wears a prosthetic leg.'”
As Rosie grows (to about 135 pounds), instead of learning to walk on three legs, she will probably continue to need a prosthesis. Kazazic said her vet told her larger dogs have more difficulty balancing on three legs.
“I saw what happened to her and literally fell in love,” Kazazic told FOX 13 about her new best friend. “It was like the other half of me.”
A similar “pawfect” match was made in April, when the family of 3-year-old Sapphyre Johnson, who had a birth defect that left her without some toes and fingers, adopted a white German Shepherd puppy born without a right front paw.
As with Rosie, other breeders advised Karen Riddle, of Greenville, S.C., to euthanize the puppy, who the Johnson family named Lt. Dan. But unlike Rosie’s breeder, Riddle said, No way! She knew this special puppy would be the perfect companion for a child with a disability — and she was right.
The Shriners Hospital for Children, which made Sapphyre’s prosthetic legs, has promised to make a prosthetic paw for Lt. Dan when he’s fully grown.
* iStillLoveDogs.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. If you click these links and buy the DVDs, iStillLoveDogs.com will receive a small percentage of the purchase price.
Two Chihuahuas and their much, much larger canine friends have been making news headlines this week. A video of a Chihuahua sleeping on a Great Dane has gone viral, and news is spreading of an abandoned Chihuahua puppy in England who was taken under the wing of the shelter manager’s Neapolitan Mastiff.
But is it safe for such small dogs to be around dogs 25 or (many) more times their size? Yes, according to Pedigree.com, as long as the dogs are socialized at an early age and closely supervised the first few months they’re together.
Without further pawdo, meet Kizzy and Dayna, and Digby and Nero.
Kizzy and Dayna
Although it was posted on YouTube by Emma Pia back in 2011, an adorable video of a teeny Chihuahua in PJs falling asleep on top of a giant Great Dane has gone viral over the past couple of days.
Kizzy, the Chihuahua, is 3 years old and “little sister & bestie” to 4-year-old Dayna, the Great Dane, according to the unlikely pair’s Facebook page. (Check it out for lots of ridiculously cute pictures of this pair.)
Digby and Nero
Digby, an abandoned 5-week-old Chihuahua puppy who weighs only a pound, quickly became best friends this week with Nero, a 126-pound Neapolitan Mastiff. Nero, a former pound pup himself, belongs to Anna White, manager of the RSPCA Southridge Animal Centre.
Two days ago, Digby was found dumped next to trash cans outside an apartment complex in London.
“When I first came across Digby, he was frozen and shaking, and had just been left to die,” RSPCA animal collection officer Natalie Ditchfield told the London Evening Standard. “He’s really tiny — small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.”
Digby and Nero became instant chums, White said. “It was as if the little fellow took on Nero as his personal minder,” she told the Standard. “Poor Digby had to be rescued once by the RSPCA, and it seems like he is taking precautions to make sure nothing can happen to him again.”
Ditchfield agreed. “He seemed to come out of his shell as soon as we arrived at Southridge and spotted Nero,” she said. “It really is a love story.”
Digby has been adopted, according to the shelter’s Facebook page today. Hopefully his new forever family will arrange play dates with Nero so this love story can continue.
An Oregon family is probably being a whole lot more careful about where they leave their socks.
After their 3-year-old Great Dane began vomiting last February, they took him to DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital in Portland, where X-rays revealed the cause of the problem.
“We opened up his stomach and kept removing sock after sock of all different shapes and sizes,” Dr. Ashley Magee, a veterinary surgeon, told KGW.
The Great Dane had been brought to the vet previously for eating socks — but just one or two of them, not nearly four dozen.
“It could be an anxiety thing,” Dr. Magee told KGW. She explained that when dogs are left home alone, they may look for comfort in items with their owners’ scent — like smelly socks. “Dogs get nervous and their natural instinct is to chew,” she said.
The Great Dane (his name wasn’t mentioned, but I really hope it’s Socks) was released from the animal hospital the day after his surgery and is doing fine.
And now, more than six months later, he’s in the news as a winner of Veterinary Practice News’ 2014 They Ate WHAT? X-ray contest.
The annual contest, which is pretty self-explanatory, is sponsored by pet insurance provider Trupanion and provides cash awards “to support the uncompensated care these hospitals provide pets,” according to Veterinary Practice News.
DoveLewis Animal Hospital entered the Great Dane’s stomach X-ray in the contest this year, and it won the third-place $500 prize.
The second-place prize of $1,000 went to Gulf Breeze Animal Hospital in Florida, which also submitted an X-ray of a dog’s unusual stomach contents. In their case it was a shish kabab skewer that was somehow swallowed by a German Shorthaired Pointer named Marley. (Ouch!) The skewer was removed and Marley is doing fine.
The winner of the contest’s first-place, $1,500 prize was Paws & Claws Animal Hospital of Plano, Texas. Its entry was an X-ray of an exotic frog who swallowed 30 ornamental rocks.
Really? Sorry, but if I had been on the They Ate WHAT? judging panel, 43.5 socks would have definitely beat 30 ornamental rocks. WHAT?!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. You can opt-out if you wish.Got it!RejectPrivacy Policy
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
