Tag: Sadie

Rescued German Shepherd Rescues New Dog Dad Having a Stroke

It didn’t take long for former pound pup Sadie, a German Shepherd whose life was saved in September by Brian Myers of Teaneck, N.J., to pay it forward. When her new dog dad had a stroke last month, Sadie helped to save his life.

After Myers, who lives alone, collapsed on the floor in the middle of the night, Sadie lied down beside him, whimpering and licking his face to help keep him awake. Myers grabbed her collar.

“She instinctively started to pull backwards,” he told NBC New York. “That was enough to enable me to shuffle with her out of where I was.” With Sadie’s help, he was able to stand up and get to a phone to call for help.

“I don’t know how she knew to do it, but that she was able to pull me the way she did, I was so grateful to her,” Myers added. If Sadie hadn’t taken action, he said, “I may as well have been worse off than I am right now.”

It’s also pretty amazing that 6-year-old Sadie was adopted at all. The German Shepherd had been surrendered to the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge in Oakland, N.J., when her owner had to relocate to a property that didn’t allow certain dog breeds. (Grrr! Yet another reason why breed bans are so unfair.)

“She was confused and seemingly lost upon rescue, having suddenly lost the only family that she knew,” the shelter wrote on its Facebook page. “Sadie is a loyal dog, but nervous and protective with new people, making her a more difficult placement.” The shelter also noted that Sadie was “especially nervous with men.”

But the night that Myers brought Sadie to her new forever home, “she jumped up and put her paws on my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the face,” he told TODAY. “And it just seemed to me that she was saying, ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’”

“To us, Brian’s a hero because he saved Sadie,” Megan Brinster, a staff member at the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge, told NBC New York. “And now Sadie saved him, so it’s like the most incredible match.”

A Very Special RBARI Story! RBARI Alumni Sadie saved owner’s life, as she drags him to help after suffering a…

Posted by Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge on Tuesday, February 2, 2021

When Myers had COVID-19 and was confined to bed, Sadie loyally stayed by his side as he recovered. He told TODAY the virus may have caused him to develop a blood clot, which led to the stroke. He is currently recovering in a rehabilitation facility while Sadie is temporarily staying with his brother. Myers told NBC New York he misses his hero dog every day.

“I can’t wait to see her and give her a hug and a kiss and I’ll probably cry my eyes out doing so,” he said. According to the shelter, Myers and Sadie “FaceTime every night.” Awww!

Myers has a very important message for anyone thinking about adopting a shelter pet: “There are many other dogs there, waiting to be somebody’s hero,” he told NBC New York.

Update: Myers and his hero dog were reunited on Feb. 9 outside his rehabilitation facility. Here’s the video. (Tissue alert!!)

 

To help the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge care for more potential hero dogs, you can make an online donation.

Photo: Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge/Facebook

17-Year-Old Deaf Dog Rescued After Spending 4 Days in Ravine

Sadie was on a walk in Connecticut’s Sleeping Giant State Park last Saturday afternoon when the deaf, 17-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever slipped out of her collar and took off.

To the horror of her dog dad, Chris Roush, Sadie went over the side of a hill…and then disappeared. When Roush couldn’t find her, he enlisted the help of friends, family and social media to help search for Sadie. He posted fliers all around the 1,500-acre state park.

Although Roush, who’s the new dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University, had just moved to the town the week before, strangers were more than happy to help him and his family find their beloved dog.

They “just started volunteering,” Roush told the Hartford Courant. “People I never knew and had never met came out to help. The community response was just unbelievable.”

Even Judy Olian, the president of Quinnipiac University, allowed the school’s drone to be used to try to locate Sadie.

Good Samaritans to the Rescue

But what wasn’t at all helpful was a storm that blew into town four days after Sadie went missing. Fortunately, Steve Tobey was searching for Sadie in the rain when he heard a dog whimpering near a trail not far from where she’d disappeared at Sleeping Giant. Soon after he posted it on social media, Toby Drums and Russell Lewis — who don’t know Roush — also started hiking around the area where the dog was heard.

Lewis, who often hikes with his own dogs in the state park, had been figuring that the worst had happened to the 17-year-old, deaf dog.  “But then this (new) post, I was just really excited and that’s what got me out there despite the storms,” he told the Hartford Courant.

Drums and his wife also have four dogs who they’ve walked in the park for years. Wearing headlamps, the couple had searched for Sadie every night after work. “We’re dog people and they’re getting older and to hear about a 17-year-old dog, deaf, lost in the woods is heartbreaking,” Drums told the New Haven Register.

As Drums and Lewis walked along a trail in the rain Wednesday, Drums heard Sadie barking. In the meantime, Roush had seen the hiker’s post and rushed to the park, joining Lewis, Drums and the others.

Sadie had fallen between boulders. To locate her, the group lowered Lewis by his ankles headfirst into a crevice.

“It was ridiculous, but I heard her crying so I started crawling a little bit deeper,” Lewis told the Hartford Courant. “She’s really, really deep in there and she’s wedged in between these two rocks; you could just see her back.”

It took a village, but the group was finally able to cautiously free Sadie from her predicament. The Hamden Fire Department soon arrived to help the rescuers.

A Tale of ‘Survival, Perseverance and More Than a Little Luck’

“This is a story of survival, perseverance and more than a little luck!” the Hamden Fire Department wrote on its Facebook page the day after Sadie was rescued.

Despite her ordeal, Sadie is expected to make a full recovery. She received treatment for cuts, scratches and dehydration at VCA Cheshire Animal Hospital. “From what the vet told me, it looked like she had been trying to dig out,” Roush told the New Haven Register.

As for the Roushes, they’re eternally grateful not only to have Sadie back but for all the compassionate volunteers who helped them find her.

“How lousy is it to move to a new place and lose your dog in the first week?” Lewis told the Hartford Courant. “But so many people stepped up to help and that’s the coolest part of the story to me.”

Photo: Hamden Fire Department/Facebook

Hero Pit Bull Alerts Authorities to Gas Leak

Home alone Wednesday afternoon, a senior Pit Bull named Sadie sensed that something was very wrong in her Westchester County, N.Y. house. She dug out a wooden block keeping a sliding door shut and ran outside, knocking down a fence as she bolted out of the yard.

Someone a few blocks away called the police when they heard Sadie’s incessant barking. When officers arrived, Sadie ran off and took them “through several streets, and then lead them back to the dog’s residence into the backyard,” Lt. Lawrence Rotta with the Tuckahoe Police Department told WABC.

The officers noticed the broken fence as well as claw marks and blood on the sliding glass door. They also noticed the strong odor of gas coming from the basement. The officers called the Eastchester Fire Department and Con Edison, which arrived at the house and confirmed a gas leak.

Sadie’s owner, Serena Costello, was at work and her 4-year-old daughter was with a sitter when a friend called her and told her about all the activity at her house.

Sadie “is our hero,” Costello told WABC. She said that in 11 years, her dog had never run away before. “It’s just so out of character for her to do. She saved our lives.”

Rotta agreed. “The dog saved the house from a potential gas explosion and gas leak,” he told WABC. “Natural gas inside the house can accumulate to the point where, God forbid, someone would come home and turn on a light switch, and there could be a potential explosion,” he told News12.

The police had to give Costello a summons for having an unleashed dog. But after ConEd determined there was a gas leak, one of the officers “took the summons and ripped it up,” Costello told WABC. The leak has been repaired.

Good girl, Sadie, and many thanks to WABC, News12 and CBS New York for covering this positive Pit Bull story.

Photo via @ABC7NY/Twitter

 

 

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