Matt Armstrong, 46, brought his neighbour's dog, Sheena the Boxer, back to life by performing CPR after she collapsed and stopped breathing while on a walk in Sunnybrook Park last Sunday.
"Just out of nowhere Sheena collapsed; she had no life signs, no heartbeat, she wasn't breathing ... She was gone ... so I just gave her mouth-to-mouth," "She has a big enough mouth you can get your face right in it, so we just worked on that for a couple minutes, then she revived.
"When she started breathing again, that was a real gift to get her back."
Matt's wife, Kathryn, who was there helping him walk Sheena along with their two dogs, Jada and Abbey, and her sister's dog, said they wouldn't have known what to do had she not remembered an episode of the Dr. Oz show.
On the self-help show hosted by the celebrity doctor made famous by Oprah Winfrey, a veterinarian had talked about pet first aid, including how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre and CPR on dogs.
"They said it would be the same thing as with humans, mouth-to-mouth," she recalled.
"Pull the tongue out, blow into the nostrils and then blow into the mouth."
She told her husband what to do and after two strong breaths, a very dazed Sheena was breathing on her own again.
While it may be his neighbor's dog, it's clear that their almost daily walks have brought Armstrong and the purebred Boxer closer together.
Playing around with Armstrong in the couple's living room yesterday, the seven-year-old dog showed she wasn't shy about locking lips with him.
For Sheena's owner, Kevin Eldon, 54, the harrowing story couldn't have had a happier ending.
"Most people would think it's ... gooey," Eldon said. "But if you love your dog, you're not going to sit back and do nothing."
In between a few friendly licks on the face from Sheena, Armstrong said he didn't mind giving a dog the kiss of life.
"It never entered my mind," he said.
Armstrong is modest about the whole event and admits it left him shaken up for a few days, but Eldon has no trouble calling his neighbor a doggone hero.
"He brought Sheena back and I know it was very traumatizing for Matt ....
"It was just amazing," he said. "She couldn't have been in the forest with a better person.
"Most people would panic and Matt didn't panic."
After the collapse, the two neighours took Sheena to an emergency vet clinic and determined she had a heart arrhythmia and a heart murmur.
A dose of pills she started should ensure that she'll be around for a lot more walks with her favorite neighbour.
Thanks neighbour and thanks Don Peat of Sun Media Toronto for the great story to kick off the New year and the new decade on a happy note.
Am I barking up the wrong tree here?
Should I be raving and ranting and yelping and howling about what the world has come to now that we are encouraging people to do cross species rescues?
Ok…Ok...some of you who are ticked with my Achilles heel for animal stories are saying...please throw us a political bone…
Ok, fetch 300 seconds of this…
Dan Leger of the Chronicle Herald Newspaper in Nova Scotia asks the question, "DON’T LIKE Stephen Harper?" and then he responds with the answer that Harper haters hate to hear..."Too bad for you. Like him or not, 2010 is the year he’s likely to cement his hold on power with a majority government.
Does it even matter whether Harper is loved, loathed or feared? Probably not. After all, Jean Chretien wasn’t really loved by Canadians, at least not as prime minister. Neither was Brian Mulroney. Yet both leaders won smashing victories and reigned as the alpha dogs of national politics.
It didn’t matter that they were unloved, because they were winners. In politics, that’s what matters. People don’t have to love their leaders to elect them. Mulroney was widely loathed, yet Canadians massively endorsed his leadership with their votes, not once, but twice.
Where Mulroney’s braggadocio grated on Canadian sensibilities, Chretien came to power with refreshing self-effacement. He was still the little guy from Shawinigan, who said before his first G7 summit: "I just want to do my best."
Yet after a few years in office, a repellent arrogance appeared in the man and few tears were shed when he retired. The ardour had cooled.
But who cares? To quote the American philosopher Tina Turner, "What’s love got to do with it?"
That helps to explain Harper. Canadians still haven’t warmed up to the man, who can’t shake his image as a cold and controlling manipulator.
But like Chretien and Mulroney, he has achieved the summit and he knows how to win. It’s a fair bet that he’ll get his majority in 2010.
It’s not because we love him; it’s because the alternatives seem untenable. Such is the way of politics.
And Dan Leger is absolutely right --how do you know when a Tory is majority bound…There are many metrics...Polls clearly give you a handle on trends and the trends show Ignatieff doing even worse in Quebec than Stephane Dion...that's the kind of metric that induces mockery among Francophone media types...and that's how they now treat Ignatieff...like a mockworthy stooge...they could care less about how many years he has spent in Canada or how many papers he wrote or published or shredded at Harvard...they just look at one fact…he is not doing as well in Quebec among Francophones as Stephane Dion...Ignatieff has actually defined down the word Loser in Quebec Politics...
Here's another way of measuring the chances of a Tory Majority being just a matter of time...this spring or this fall. The most reliable media organ for the Liberal Party is the Toronto Star...today they published a column by fierce Tory partisan Ezra Levant. Ezra has never said a genuinely kind thing about a liberal. If a Liberal found a cure to cancer, EZRA might be tempted to say something benignly generous--Today they publish a column by Ezra which is pounding the Liberals for their drop dead dumb way of handling the detainee controversy.
You will recall that's where Taliban gangsters are trying to murder as many Canadians as possible. Some get captured by Canadians and get handed over to Afghan cops who in some cases behave like cops do in the third world...The Liberals decide to torque this scenario into rhetoric which includes words like Canadians have committed war crimes. Politically the Liberals have hit the wall on this. They managed to seduce those most willing to think the worst of Tories…they managed to tick off those who think the best of our military. The Toronto Star which wanted the detainee issue to work has seen it fail and now blame the Liberal front liners for blowing it and that means they are blaming Michael Ignatieff. A Tory majority? You can take that to the bank. It will happen unless the economy tanks.
And that's not likely. Most people with money on the table believe the worst of this storm was over two financial quarters ago. Yours truly was telling you that two quarters ago, when I delivered a commentary called, “Canada Sweet Land of Hard Work and Prosperity.” I asked you not to cave to the cave dwellers…Most of you did not. Ipsos Reid now reports Canadian consumer confidence is soaring. You can google it Ipsos Reid RBC survey Optimism....60 percent of Canadians optimistic about 2010--Coming from where we have been, that's a very Happy Number.
Happy New Year Canada ---I'm Charles Adler on the Corus Radio Network.
