Mountaintop Natural Pets

Source: VisaliaTimes, May 8, 2010

Lino Camacho of Farmersville has a habit of saving lives and protecting the defenseless.

The 17-year-old did it again Thursday, witnesses and police reported, in what could easily have been a tragic loss of life.

“This young man chose to save a precious young life, endangering his own in the process,” said Lt. Mike Marquez of the Farmersville Police Department.

Camacho snatched life from the jaws of death, as 18-month old Nevaeh Baxter was attacked by a family pet — a mixed-breed dog, part German shepherd and part boxer — around 9:20 a.m. Thursday.

“Seniors didn’t have to go in early Thursday because of STAR testing [at Farmersville High School],” Camacho said. “That turned out to be a very lucky thing.”

Camacho and his brother Luis, 19, who will be attending College of the Sequoias this fall, heard what Lino thought were “two dogs fighting.”

However, one of those sounds was the screaming of the girl as she was attacked. That was what Lino saw as he ran across the street and scaled two fences to reach the scene in the 500 block of North Ventura Street in Farmersville.

Lino’s athleticism — he played soccer for Farmersville’s championship boys soccer squad — proved valuable.

“I couldn’t have gotten there in time,” Luis said. “By the time I got to the backyard by going on the roof, I saw Lino grabbing the dog with a chokehold.”

Lino said he would have killed the dog if he had to — but managed to just hang on until help arrived. The dog is now being sheltered at the Valley Oak SPCA until a decision is made under Farmersville’s vicious-dog ordinance on whether to euthanize the animal.

Little Nevaeh underwent surgery Friday at Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center for several injuries, including puncture wounds and a cut to the face which affected at least one eye. She is listed in “critical but stable” condition, Marquez said.

“It looks like the eye will be saved,” said Cynthia Anaya, Lino’s mother and a friend of Nevaeh’s family.

More rescues

Four years ago, as a freshman at Tulare Union High School, Lino saved a classmate from drowning in the school’s pool, Luis said.

“This one guy was diving in and never came back up,” Luis said.

Lino said he instinctively jumped in and managed to keep the struggling, panicky boy’s head above water.

“He was kicking me all over the place, but I kept grabbing at him until I could get him to the [pool's] edge,” Lino said.

In another more recent incident, Lino saved his cousin Veronica Anaya from what she said was a “dangerous snake.”

“This snake was hissing and trying to strike at me,” Anaya said.

Lino took care of the problem by simply killing the snake, she said.

“That was the only thing he could do,” Anaya said.

Some people were born to save others, said Lino’s uncle, Joe Anaya III.

“That’s what Lino wants to do when he gets older,” Joe said. “He wants to save lives. He certainly did the right thing this time around.”

Source: USAToday.com

A girl was taken to a northern Virginia hospital after being attacked by a Customs and Border Protection K-9 in training at Washington’s Dulles airport, reports W-USA Channel 9 of Washington. The girl was at the airport with her mother to pick up a friend arriving from Argentina.

W-USA says the dog bit the girl “just under her pelvis and refused to let her go. The dog would not release her, even as the handler gave the command to release.” The child’s mother tried to help, but was bitten in her hands before the dog eventually was subdued by its handler, according to W-USA.

W-USA says it “has learned (the girl) has received more than 20 stitches to her mid section as a result of the attack” and has since “been released from the hospital into the care of her family.”

The child’s family says nothing was done to provoke the dog, reported to be a Belgian Malinois. “He attacked her, pulled her to the ground and bit her in the stomach and wouldn’t let go of her,” the child’s mother tells W-USA.

“You feel helpless when your child is on the floor, and you can’t take the animal off your child, and your screaming can’t get this dog to release your child it’s very hard,” the mother adds. “My daughter is going to remember this for the rest of her life and there will be a big scar on her belly to show for it.”

Still, the child’s mother didn’t appear to take  issue with the agency’s dog-training efforts. W-USA writes the woman “believes the dog training is good but says there should be added precautions such as wearing muzzles and keeping them away from children.”

Source: CTV.ca, Jan 3, 2009

A cougar attacked a B.C. family’s Golden Retriever Saturday night after the dog stepped in between the cougar and an 11-year-old boy.

Police, who later shot the cougar dead, credited the dog — Angel — for saving the boy’s life.

According to RCMP, the boy went to retrieve some firewood at his family’s home in Boston Bar, about 200 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.

A cougar began to charge across the yard at the boy.

The dog stepped in and engaged the cougar, which was much larger than the dog.

A call was made to police. An RCMP officer was nearby and was on scene within a minute.

The officer found the cougar under the back porch and heard the dog cry out as the cougar chewed on the dog’s neck.

The officer fired two rounds into the cougar’s rear end, but the cougar continued its attack.

The officer closed in to within five feet and shot the cougar again, killing it.

The dog survived with only minor injuries. The boy was not hurt.

Source: DuluthNewsTribune.com, June 19, 2009

Jada is a 15-pound hero. The eight-year-old dachshund hurled herself at a wolf June 9 to save a fellow canine, Lana.

As the dogs’ owner, Dana Lundeen, tells it, she was sitting on the front porch of her South Range home that afternoon when first Lana, then Jada, ran barking around the house. Suddenly, she heard an awful bark. Rounding the corner of the house, she saw a wolf about 75 yards away.

As Lundeen watched, it kicked aside the one-year-old Lana and grabbed Jada in its mouth. She ran toward them, yelling.

“I was screaming my lungs out, hoping he would drop her and he did,” Lundeen said.

As the wounded dog ran back toward the house, she said, the wolf took a few steps in Lundeen’s direction, than padded away.

“It happened so fast,” she said. “I was more worried about my dog than anything.”

Lundeen wrapped the bleeding dog in a blanket and called her 17-year-old son, Devin, home from Northwestern High School to help.

“I didn’t know if I’d have to shoot her,” Lundeen said. “I mean, her stomach’s hanging out. [Devin] says ‘Well, Mom, is she alive?’ Well, yeah. He said, ‘Well, then there’s hope.’ ”

They drove to Superior Animal Hospital, where the dachshund spent 3½ hours in surgery.

“They are awesome people there,” Lundeen said.

The wounds were similar to those seen when a larger dog attacks a smaller one, said veterinarian Bob McClellan. “The internal wounds are 10 times worse than what it looks like from the outside.”

Jada suffered crushed ribs, a spleen split in two, a collapsed lung and a left kidney that had been pulled away from the abdominal wall, he said. But the veterinarian was able to repair her, inside and out. After that, it was up to the dachshund.

“The dog’s a tough little dog,” McClellan said. “She hung in there.”

Sunday, she returned home to South Range.

“She’s full of many, many staples,” Lundeen said, affectionately calling the dog “Frankenweinie.”

Lana was uninjured.

Born and raised in South Range and living on Lundeen Road off County Highway V since October, Lundeen said she’s seen deer, coyotes, foxes, geese and more animals cross the 64-acre property regularly. Still, the wolf came as a surprise.

A winter 2008 survey by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources puts the number of wolves in the state between 626 to 662, nearly 100 more than the previous year. Most of them live in the north.

“Douglas County has some of the highest density of wolf populations in the state,” said Adrian Wydevan, a DNR mammal ecologist based out of Park Falls

“They are mostly shy, living out their lives in the forest,” he said.

But sometimes not. “Last year, we had seven cases of dogs attacked near people’s homes,” he said. One died, the others were only injured. That was mostly due to owners who were close enough to scare the wolves away.

McClellan noted that the amount of damage the wolf did to Jada with one bite was incredible.

“If the wolf had had a second bite, the dog would have been done,” he said. “Fortunately, Dana was there when it happened.”