Incredible Animals Honoured As Heroes
Posted May 7, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
They’re called man’s best friend. And during the past year, they’ve more than proved it. But perhaps Mark Twain contemporary Josh Billings said it best: “a dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” As it turns out, cats fit the category, too, and both were well represented at this year’s Animal Hall of Fame ceremony in Toronto.
Among those distinguishing themselves this year: Mel-O, a cat from the small town of Morinville, Alberta. She came to the rescue in March 2006 after she consistently began to pester her best friend, a youngster named Alex Rose (top left), by repeatedly swatting him on the face with her paw after he went to bed. Knowing it wasn’t her temperament, the boy woke his mother and told her something was wrong.
That’s when mom decided to take the blood sugar reading of Alex – who suffers from juvenile diabetes. Sure enough, it was dangerously low. “She saved my life from a diabetic coma and a seizure,” the child relates. “And if that happens, if I have my seizure, my mom told me … I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
Jango, a ten-year-old Golden Retriever saved his entire family from flames by waking them up in the middle of a cold January night in Trail, B.C. as smoke poured through their home. “She saved us from a fire,” relates little Koby Unger . “She bited on dad’s face.”
Echo, a Sheppard-Collie mix in Manitoulin Island, kept her best pal Tish Smith alive with her body heat and alerted rescuers after their canoe tipped over last July. The dog never left her owner’s side, despite their inborn instinct to paddle for shore.
Not all those honoured were house pets. Ki, an OPP dog, helped track down a man lost in the Haliburton Highlands in the bitter ice-encrusted cold of last winter.
