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Loyal dog prevents suicide: There have been numerous instances of dogs saving people, including a recent example in France this week where a German Shepherd prevented its owner from killing herself.
A Pyrenean mastiff dog is pictured during a heavy snow-fall, on Feb. 26, 2013, in the Northern Spanish Basque village of Oquendo. (Rafa Riva//AFP/Getty Images)
The recent example of a French woman being saved by her dog as she pointed a rifle towards her heart to kill herself may seem a bit out of the ordinary, but dogs have saved people from certain death on many occasions—even within the past year.
Here are five examples:
Poland
Just several days ago, a 3-year-old girl went missing in a Polish village during frigid temperatures. But a stray dog followed her and kept her warm through the night before she was found by rescuers.
“For the whole night the animal was with the girl, it never left her. Remember, it was 5 degrees below zero and the child was wet,” a firefighter said of the incident.
The child was found clinging to the dog about two miles from her home in the village of Pierzwin. The dog apparently slept with the child through the night to keep her warm.
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Indianapolis
Last November, a family dog in Indianapolis stopped armed kidnappers from leaving a family home. In the incident, a man and a woman broke in and abducted the 3-month-old daughter of Nayeli Garzon-Jimenez while her husband was working.
But the family’s pit bull mix prevented the two assailants from taking off with the child.
“She started screaming and crying,” Adolfo Angeles-Morales, the husband, told local station WISH-TV, referring to his daughter. He added, “The guy said, ‘Give me the money or we take the baby.’”
The woman assailant then grabbed the child and bolted for the door, he said.
Angeles-Morales said, however, that “one of the doggies didn’t let her go through the back door” and the woman threw the baby back.
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British Colombia
A dog rescued an 11-year-old boy from a mountain lion attack in 2010 in the small Canadian town of Bar Boston, located some 150 miles north of Vancouver.
The dog, named Angel, threw herself between the boy and the puma and almost died in the scuffle.
“She was my best friend, but now she’s even greater to me,” the boy, Austin Forman, told NBC News, referring to his dog. “She’s more than a best friend now”
Before the attack, he said, “The dog knew something was up, because she ran toward me just at the right time, and the cougar ended up getting her instead.”
“I was just lucky my dog was there, because it happened so fast I wouldn’t have known what hit me,” he added.
New Jersey
Last month, an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s got lost and fell down in the snow in Piscataway, N.J., but a pit bull came to the rescue.
“She looked back at me and then barked, and there I saw a figure laying,” Cara Jones, the owner of the pit bull—named Creature—told ABC News. “She was trying to get up and the sticks kept breaking on her, so she would fall back down.”
Jones recalled not being able to figure out the reason why the dog kept trying to lead her into the brush, where the elderly woman, 89-year-old Carmen Mitchell, fell down. Mitchell had wandered into the woods around a mile from her caretaker.
Even after a full search, police with K-9 units couldn’t find her until Creature arrived on the scene.
“I had a lot of people looking down on me for having a pit bull, and I’m glad that I have her,” Jones said.
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United Kingdom
In 2009, a man who fell down a 30-foot slope and broke his neck was kept alive when both his dogs kept him warm in frigid temperatures in Brixham, England.
The man, 66-year-old Michael Dyer, was walking his dogs when the incident took place. After he fell, Dyer lay unconscious in the snow.
However, as Dyer slipped in and out of consciousness through the night, his dogs stayed with him and kept his core temperature high enough to survive the cold.
“He loves those dogs and the fact they wouldn’t leave him is amazing,” his friend, Barry Robinson, told the Daily Mail.
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