I heard it on the radio this morning: a heroic little dachshund named Annie brought help to her elderly owner. And it happened just a few miles from the Portland, Oregon suburb where I live.
It was around one o’clock in the morning this past Tuesday. Residents in the Lake Grove neighborhood of Lake Oswego, Oregon called police to complain about a barking dog.
The head of the Lake Oswego police canine unit responded to the calls, expecting to find a huge, menacing dog on the loose. Instead, Sergeant John Brent found a nine and a half pound dachshund. The little dog was agitated and aggressive, doing her best to block the patrol car from proceeding.
Brent tried to catch the little dachshund, but she wouldn’t be caught. She kept barking and barking. When Brent tried to leave, little Annie did her best to stop him.
That’s when the police office heard a faint cry for help.
Annie’s owner — sixty year old Pam Fischer, who suffers from a degenerative joint disease and walks with a cane — was collapsed underneath a bush nearby. She had tripped while stepping up onto a high curb and started to fall. She reached out for a street sign to try to stay on her feet, but instead she hit her head. Fischer hit the ground and found that she couldn’t get up again.
Fischer told The Oregonian that Annie flipped out and started barking because “she knew I didn’t belong on the ground.” Without the dachshund’s determined barking, Fischer could have been stuck on the ground all night. Thanks to Annie’s big barker, Fischer was only on the ground for an hour.
According to Fischer, the moral of the story is this: “don’t climb up curbs where there are no street lights. Don’t grab onto a wiggly pole. And always have your dog with you.”
This story makes me feel a little bit better about my two barkers… maybe the power of bark can be used for good (and not just for chasing off the landscapers).