Amazing Dog Rescue Three Weeks In The Making
Posted December 7, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
They say dogs are man’s best friend. But this week, a mysterious GO Train rider proved he was a dog’s best friend. And now his grateful owner is trying to track him down for a thank you that can’t possibly express the relief she feels.
This is the story of Jagger, a Toronto pooch who got scared three weeks ago when he came into contact with another canine in a local dog park. He ran away and for nearly a month, Karen Peterke had no idea where her beloved pet had gone – or even if she’d ever see him again.
Any owner knows the gamut of emotions that accompany a lost dog and Peterke went through every one of them. She even put up a $500 reward for the animal’s return, waiting and praying for an impossible outcome that seemed increasingly remote as the days went by. Her phone never rang as she checked with animal shelters, put up posters, and waited.
And just when it seemed that wait would never end, a passenger on his way into work restored her hope – and saved her dog. It had been 20 long days. The sharp-eyed stranger was travelling on the GO as it headed towards the south end of the Don River when he spotted what appeared to be a dog in the icy waters of Lake Ontario. He picked up his cell phone as the train roared by, having just gotten a glimpse, and called Toronto Animal Services. They went out to have a look.
And sure enough, they came across a still scared Jagger, emaciated, hungry and thirsty – but still very much alive in a tiny hole on the side of the river. “[I] jumped over the embankment, walked along the shoreline, looked inside and sure enough there was a dog cowering inside there,” recalls Joe Debusschere.
Peterke, who had been feeling “stressful, depressed, emotional,” got the phone call she couldn’t believe she’d ever hear. Her dog was coming home.
She still can’t believe the kindness of strangers. “It’s pretty amazing that not only did he spot him but took the time to get off at Union Station, I believe, and backtrack so that being that it was such an inconspicuous spot, that he pointed it out for Animal Services so that he could come home.”
Karen is hoping to meet the man who made her dreams come true. Jagger may want to give his hero a big wet kiss, but Peterke has other plans in mind – the $500 reward she promised to the person that brought her best friend home.
