A persistent dachschund saved a Washington family from a potentially damaging fire in their mobile home Sunday.
A 3-year-old dachshund named JoJo — who the family took home after finding him as a stray — is being credited for trying to shove 11-year-old Kalen Huntley out of her bed and alerting her parents to an electrical fire smoldering behind an outlet on her bedroom wall.
“Our dog saved our house,” Diane Urquhart, who lives in a mobile home park in Kennewick with her husband, Colt, and four of their five children, told the Tri-City Herald.
The couple and three of the kids were home early Sunday when JoJo, who normally sleeps in their daughter Kalen’s room, began repeatedly coming out the room and approaching the adults.
“He came out to see us four times, then kept going back into our daughter’s room,” Mrs. Urquhart said. On top of that, his ears weren’t in their happy position, she said.
“These ears we did not recognize,” she said. “And his face, if a dog can look worried, he looked worried.”
When she went into her daughter’s room, she smelled burning rubber and saw the dog nudging her sleeping daughter with his nose.
They called 911, and got everybody out of the house, taking their two cats and JoJo.
Urquhart said the wall at the head of her daughter’s bed was hot. Firefighters told the family the outlet, which had a lamp and alarm clock plugged into it, was minutes away from catching fire. When the family removed the outlet the next day, one side of it was scorched.
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(Photo: Courtesy of Tri-City Herald)
A year after the death of her fiance, Saundra Frazer was awakened by the dog he brought into her life, whose barks and nudges alerted her to a fire in her home.
Frazer, 27, and the couple with whom she shared a home in Lake Worth, Fla., both credit Bubba, a 7-year-old golden retriever, with saving them from the fire.
Bubba’s barks awoke Frazer and Lori and Charles McCauley, who lived in the back of the house.
Frazer’s fiance was the one who brought Bubba into her life when they lived in Fort Lauderdale, the Palm Beach Post reports.
“He’s a champ,” says Charles McCauley. “He’s a hero. If we didn’t get out, it was going to overwhelm us.”
All three, and Bubba, were staying in a West Palm Beach hotel after the fire, courtesy of the local Red Cross.
(Photo: Frazer and Bubba in hotel room; by Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post)
The Michigan man charged with animal cruelty after authorities found hundreds of Chihuahuas in his home, live and dead, pleaded guilty in a plea agreement yesterday.
Kenneth Lang Jr. of Dearborn, will serve five years’ probation under supervision of a Wayne County mental health court.
Lang, 56, admitted in the plea that the animals in his home were subjected to abusive conditions because he was overwhelmed by their sheer numbers, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Lang will not be permitted to own any animals. He’s also required to make $3,000 restitution to the Animal Legal Defense Fund for the examination of the dead dogs, and restitution to the city of Dearborn.
Lang’s lawyer, James Schmier, said Lang has an IQ of about 70 and suffers from several psychiatric conditions. “He’s a very human guy with a very human story, and with very human frailties,” the lawyer said.
Lang was found living in squalid conditions with more than 100 live Chihuahuas and more than 100 dead ones found frozen in freezers. The prosecutors said of the 105 that were rescued, all but 13 have been successfully adopted. Those are living in a no-kill shelter.
SPCA investigators in Philadelphia found the remains of dozens of animals when they responded to a report of a dogs living inside a house in unsanitary conditions.
The animals, found inside a house on North Front Street, had apparently been sacrificed in religious rituals.
“The whole house was covered in feathers from chickens that had been sacrificed,” said George Bengal, director of law enforcement of the Pennsyvlania SPCA. There were also skeletons of what were possibly other farm animals, and what appeared to be skeletons of dogs, cats and possibly primates, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.
Bengal said a blood-spattered altar had been set up in the house. Candles were burning and music was playing when investigators arrived. Two dogs were found alive, according to Bengal.
On Sunday, Pennsylvania SPCA officers used a warrant to search the property after receiving a tip that two emaciated dogs were being kept at the house.
They found, and removed, the dogs, but only after confronting an elaborate altar and the bones of possibly several hundred animals that had been killed, apparently as part of Santeria – a combination of African religions and Catholicism that originated among slaves in the Caribbean, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today.
The officers also found what appeared to be the remains of small monkeys.
Bengal said the man who lived at the house and is suspected of performing many of the killings is believed to be in Mexico. His wife , who may still be in the city, is being sought for questioning.
We’re proud to unofficially unveil the sign that will welcome visitors to “Newt’s Nook — A Home for Pitbulls.”
Now under construction in Celina, Texas, the shelter was made possible by a $5,000-plus donation from a Dallas strip club owner — the amount being a refund of what she paid to attend a dinner to receive an “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Newt Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future.
American Solutions, as we told you yesterday, mistakenly bestowed the honor on Dawn Rizos, the owner of The Lodge, a popular Dallas strip club.
When former Speaker of the House Gingrich, a week before the awards ceremony, uninvited Rizos, he agreed to refund the $5,000 that she, as instructed, had submitted in exchange for the privilege of eating dinner with him. He refunded her airfare as well.
“At first our feelings were hurt,” Rizos said. “But then we figured at least we could make something positive out of his bad manners.”
About the same time Rizos got her refund, she heard that Animal Guardians of America had an urgent need for a heated and air-conditioned shelter for rescue dogs, primarily pit bulls, at its sanctuary in Celina.
“We do a lot of charitable work and we love animal rescue groups,” Ms. Rizos said. “The cost was about the same as the amount Newt sent back to us, so we decided to do something good with it.”
The formal dedication for Newt’s Nook is scheduled for early November.
“We’re sorry that Dawn was treated so unfairly,” said Annette Lambert, director of the Animal Guardians chapter in North Texas. “But this will be great for a lot of wonderful dogs. I hope Newt will stop by sometime to see what we’ve built in his name.”
Rizos says Gingrich is invited to the opening, as well as to The Lodge, which describes itself as “the country’s best-known and most-honored gentlemen’s club,” and one that has “set national standards for elegance and integrity, and helps hundreds of people support their families and improve their lives.”
“He’s always welcome at The Lodge,” Ms. Rizos said. “We don’t hold a grudge. And we still have a lot to talk about.”
(Photo: The sign, created by The Lodge bartender Bryan Callaway, that will welcome pit bulls to their new shelter; courtesy of Mike Precker)
