Have you a tale of a dog, or cat, or gerbil who was directly responsible for helping out a person in need? Not counting service animals, tho - they’re just doing their jobs. I want to hear about family pets or even strays who stepped up and took care of a human in need.
Naturally, I have my own anecdote to share.
Years back, we had a border collie/lab mix named Bernie. Mostly she was little more than an animated throw rug and trip hazard, but she was gentle and very sweet. One time when my husband and I were going on vacation, my mom agreed to keep Bernie for us.
My mom lives a little south of the Pennsylvania border on almost 7 acres, mostly wooded, in what was primarily a farming area. One day, she put Bernie on her leash and went walking in the part of her property farthest from the house. Not having a very good sense of direction, she got twisted around and disoriented.
She was resigned to just walking till she hit a road, then making her way back from there in a roundabout route. But for some reason, she decided to let Bernie off her leash. Even tho this was the first time she’d ever been in those woods, Bernie led Mom back to the house. That happened 7 or 8 years ago, and my mom still talks about it. Alas, Bernie’s days ended almost 5 years ago at the ripe old age of 15, but she earned a little bit of immortality.
OK, so she didn’t pull my mom out of a well - she did save a 70+y/o woman from a very long walk along some narrow country roads.
I had an Afghan hound named Siddhartha. He was, as his name suggests, a very peace-loving dog. Literally, the squirrels could come up next to him and eat from his food bowl. Total pacifist.
One day, my sister had her son strapped in his stroller getting ready to go on a walk. The neighbor’s dog, a white german shepherd with a bite history, broke out from the dog where his owner was leaning out, talking to my sister. He was headed straight for my nephew in the stroller, and my Sid took a leap and a growl and got between them and held that dog off. He took a few pretty severe bites, but the GSD didn’t come close to my nephew.
I landed in the hospital with a burst appendix two weeks after my son was born, so the baby stayed with MIL, who had a chow.
This chow would sit in the doorway where Ivyboy was sleeping, facing out, like she was guarding it. When he cried and MIL was heating up a bottle, she’d pace back and forth from the kitchen to the baby’s room, as if to say, “You hear him? Come on, hurry up!”
While my FIL was in the Air Force they were stationed in Italy. At that time she had two young children and I kid you not, a wolf as a pet in the apartment. His name was Prince and she loved that dog to pieces.
One day, FIL is out on deployment and MIL is sweeping the steps to the apartment when two sketchy men came up. She didn’t speak much Italian, but it was obvious they had bad intentions. She’s casually sweeping and backing up the stairs, trying to make it back to the apartment when she can lock the door, when here comes Prince. He’s silently skulking down the stairs.
She said she heard a growl, a bark, then Prince chased the men off. He didn’t come back until that evening and he had blood on his muzzle. No idea what happened, but she was never bothered again.
This same Prince used to chase my husband when they were at the beach. If Ivylad got too far out for Prince’s comfort, he’d grab him by the diaper and drag him out of the water.
Sadly, they weren’t able to bring Prince back with them when FIL was relocated to the States. I met Ivylad about 20 years later and she still talked about that dog.
I don’t recall this because I was too young at the time but I have heard the story. We lived in a house with a fenced backyard with steps outside the fence. One morning my older brother and sisters left for school and left the gate open. Mom turned her back for a moment and our dog at the time, a beagle mix began barking crazily. Apparently, I had crawled over and was very close to taking a header down the steps. Mom credits him with alerting her and saving me.
Similar story. Once when our son was a toddler he was playing in the back yard but we didn’t realize the gate was left open and we live on a very busy street. Our GSD apparently recognized things were amiss, ran inside, barked madly (which she almost never did) and as soon as I acknowledged her she bolted outside. I followed her and saw that she ran into the front yard where our son had already wandered and interposed herself between him and the street.
Secondhand story here, from about 30 years back. A coworker, when his kids were young, lived somewhere very rural. One day his father was visiting, and watching the kids while the parents were out. The toddler somehow managed to go missing during all this.
They finally found the toddler very near a lake. A witness had just encountered the toddler trying his hardest to fall into the lake and drawn. Fortunately, as he reported, the family’s Newfoundland took exception to the plan and prevented the kid from going into the drink.
Post-WW2 my mothers’ family returned to the Netherlands for a few years.
She still tells the story of the time her father fell through the ice when skating on a canal. His German Shepherd, Max, went out on the ice and grabbed the back of his coat, giving him enough support to let him get to the side and climb out.
My brother had two daughters (kindergarten, the oldest might have been in elementary school). And a Rottweiler that was bigger than they were.
One day, they were out in the front yard. My brother noticed that, whenever one of the girls would run toward the street, the dog would intercept her. He would block her path with his body, and then sidestep toward the house, gently forcing her away from the street.
My brother had never trained the dog. He did this solely on instinct. I don’t know if he knew that cars are dangerous, or if he recognized the sidewalk as the boundary of the family territory. Whatever his reasons, he made sure that the children stayed inside the yard.
I was camping out with my Samoyed Husky in Northern Ca. I was alone with just my dog and didn’t have a tent. I had tied my dog leash to my belt b/c I am hard of hearing and wanted to made sure my dog didn’t run off. I was woken in the middle of the night by my dog was growling like I never heard before and when I looked up there a mountain lion only a few ft. away from us ! My dog was ready to take the animal on if I had left her lose , she was able scare the mountain lion off . I really believe my dog saved both our lives b/c her leash was tied to my belt , if the animal wanted to kill my dog it would bitten me too. I glad I didn’t take my hearing aid off I may not had heard my dog right away.
I can relate my brother’s story. Many years ago he got into dog training, and he even trained some German shepherds for police work. One of his dogs, Terry, was the best trained dog I ever saw: voice, hand and foot commands, and trained to work with the cops as a ride-along dog.
My brother used to take him to competitions where he could show off the dog’s abilities. At one particular event, as he was putting Terry through his paces, the dog suddenly and unexpectedly broke ranks and took off at a full run. My brother was appalled, as the dog was taught to ignore things like rabbits, cats and other critters. He started to go after Terry, but by then the dog was about 100 feet away and had tackled a man to the ground as a cop ran over, gun drawn. Turns out the man got away from the cop (who was someone Terry often rode with), and Terry heard the cop yell “halt!”, which was all he needed.
When I was a kid we had a dog who didn’t technically save us but had great intentions. We had a swimming pool, and if we were thrashing around while playing she would mistake it for drowning. If we got too close to the edge she’d try pull us out by our hair. Fun times.
A few months ago I was in my study reading at my desk when our cat came running in and meowing at a mighty tone. This wasn’t the I’m bored - hug me meow, or the I’m hungry - feed me meow, it was something more urgent. So I followed her into the kitchen where she showed me a tiny fruit fly was circling a ceiling light. I disposed of it.
I’m not sure what would have happened if she hadn’t alerted me, but cats is weird.
Okay, I’ll bite. Way back, somewhere in the 70s, I was doing a gig in small town in Montana with a group of actor types. Ford invites us up to his house one evening for some particularly notable hashish. The kind of stuff where you can’t get through a hit without zooming off. After a while I decided to stop and reclaim horizontal stability in a familiar place, but as I stepped out the door, I stepped into the void. Sorry, I’m reading Pynchon these days. Could not see, or recognize anything, so I set off, hoping to find something I could see that I could remember. Reaching a main road of some importance, I look up and see Toby, a black lab who belonged to one of my friends (this is before Roots, folks, back in the early 70s) coming back from his nightly whoring. Toby, am I glad to see you. Take me home buddy. And he slowed down his trot and patiently let me follow him home to our little village, stopping constantly to look back and make sure I was following him. Whose a good boy?
My wife’s grandmother has a country house in somewhat rural Connecticut. We used to visit here there every summer for many years. Her next door neighbors up there were quite nice, with a dog and a teenaged daughter. I mostly remembered them for being the people who bought my wife’s grandmother’s vintage VW Beetle from the late 1960s, after she decided she wasn’t up to driving herself any more. They fixed it up and gave it to their daughter to drive when she went to college.
Where’s the dog story? Well, the daughter came home from college for the holiday break. She had been back for about a week when one night, at something like 2am, the dog woke everybody up, barking furiously. The house was on fire! Some kind of electrical short with a space heater, apparently. They had a smoke alarm, but it was in the kitchen; apparently they didn’t have any working ones upstairs where the bedrooms were, and the dog saved their lives.
But wait, there’s more. They ran out of the burning house to their backyard, calling 911 on a cell phone, when the dog ran back into the house. The father tried to go back in to get the dog to come back out, but apparently the dog had run back upstairs, where the fire was, into the flames. He was driven back, calling and calling for the dog, who he could hear barking, but wouldn’t come to him.
The fire department arrived and put out the flames, and they found the dog - dead of smoke inhalation - in their daughter’s bedroom. Who had been home all week, but had just gone out that night to visit some friends out of town.
The loyal, brave, and loving dog died trying to find and save their daughter, who hadn’t even been home.
One day shortly after our cat Rary adopted us (he just strolled into the house one day and the dogs had to deal) he escaped out the back door.
I ran after him to try to grab him (we don’t believe in outdoor kitties) only to find our dog Buck had him trapped him up against the house, straddling him. Rary tried to move, Buck would move right with him.
When our youngest was a toddler, I had just taken something out of the over when he came running toward the open oven. My hands were full, but our yellow lab Bean came and got between him and the oven. More recently we had a cat who would sometimes bolt out of an open door and go into the hedge. Our Cattle Dog mix Ginger would herd him back in. Ginger will also alert us when she thinks it’s time to feed the cats (we feed them at 8 when we’re up but we’re still asleep on weekends). That’s just being a busybody, though.
