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Old August 8th, 2009, 03:40 PM
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Bailey_ Bailey_ is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Edmonton, Alberta
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Has Your Pet Saved a Life?

Yesterday, my old landlord dropped by to give me a letter that had been sent twice to my old residence where I lived about four years ago now. She decided to finally just come over and drop it off as I only live about a block from my old place.

Of course I had no idea who the letter was from - there was no name in the return address.
But when I opened the letter and started skimming through it to find out who it was from, my throat closed over and I don't even know how I didn't ball my eyes out.

Before I was married and living on my own, I owned a Golden Retriever named Bosco.



We called him 'Golden Lashes', and he was such a wonderful companion. (We had to put him down last year, it was actually the reason I ended up finding pets.ca trying to get more information about osteoarthritis, but anyway, I digress.)

One Friday night around 2am in the morning I woke up to Bosco growling and facing my bedroom window. I couldn't see or hear anything when I peeked into the back alley, so I told him to go and lie down - to calm down - and settled back under the covers.
Again, a few minutes later, same thing. This time, the growling was much deeper and the hair on his neck was standing straight up.

When I looked out my window the second time, I saw them. A guy and a girl, talking back and forth - the girl walking away from the guy and the guy following her.
They started cursing, and things seemed to get heated. They walked out of my view at that point, but I stayed there - listening.

And that's when I heard her screaming, his threats, the banging (which I later found out was him throwing her body against a dumpster). I'll leave out the rest for sake of keeping this fairly PG, but you get the point.

Scared, totally unsure of what to do, I put Bosco on his leash, grabbed a kitchen knife (which police later told me was a TERRIBLE idea because chances are it would've been used on me), and called 911 on my cell phone as I headed out the door.
When I got to the entrance of the back alley, I could see their shapes...again, I won't go into details.

I screamed "DO YOU NEED HELP!?" to which she simply sobbed. Bosco was barking and lunging on his leash the entire time, and I managed in my grace to drop the knife as the man started running away.
Police arrived literally seconds later, and everything was swept out of my control.

The letter that I recieved in the mail yesterday was from the woman who had been attacked. Apparently the police couldn't ever give her my name to thank me, so she simply addressed the note to the 'Hero & Angel' that saved her life and sent it to the complex that she assumed we had come from.
In her letter she wrote how normally scared she was of dogs, but when she heard 'the dog' barking and coming towards her, she had never been so relieved to hear that sound in her life.

The part that broke my heart was knowing that she wanted to meet us both, Bosco included. She included her phone number and her name, and we had a long conversation last night - there was a lot of tears, especially when I told her that Bosco was no longer with us.

I can't really explain in words what it felt like to know how much we had meant to someone all this time, without even knowing who she was or what had really happened. All the police had ever told me was that I was stupid for leaving my house and that the woman would be okay. Sadly, the man was not found as he was of no relation to the woman. She had never seen him before in her life.

I wanted to share this regardless of the personal nature of this situation. I think it's so inspiring to know how greatly animals can effect our lives and others, even when we least expect it.

Has anyone ever had a similiar experience?
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~B~
"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater. . . suggest that he wear a tail."

Bailey (Labradoodle)
Tippy (Collie/ShepX)
Vali (American Bulldog)
Artiro (Cane Corso)
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