I'm always on the lookout for a good dog story. That being the case, a piece from the Anchorage Daily News, reprinted this morning in The Charlotte Observer, immediately gripped me.
Seems there's a woman in Alaska who may be even more of a dog lover than yours truly.
Loves her sled dog "Miller" so much that she quit the Iditarod (1,150-mile sled dog race across Alaska) to give the suddenly collapsed Miller mouth-to-mouth and mush him back to a checkpoint (through the frozen, snowy wilderness) to a veterinarian.
Bottom line: Zoya DeNure (pictured with this blog post) helped save Miller' life. She didn't complete the Iditarod, but Miller--thanks to Zoya's loving, selfless care, an IV, warm blankets and a doctor's attention--is back on his feet wagging his tail and eager once again to be a sled dog.
Zoya, you da woman!
Miller, you da canine!
(Below is the entire woman saves dog heartwarming story:)
Iditarod turns into race to save stricken dog
By Beth Bragg
Anchorage Daily News
ANCHORAGE, Alaska Reunited with the dog she had feared dead, musher Zoya DeNure said she was done with the Iditarod for a while but not done with sled dog racing.
In fact, she's planning to enter the team - minus a male named Miller - in this weekend's Chatanika 200, a mid-distance race outside Fairbanks.
"You should see them. The dogs want to run. They've been training for the Iditarod. A 200-mile race is not going to faze them," DeNure, of Gakona, Alaska, said Wednesday, the day after she scratched from the Iditarod, which started last weekend, out of concern for one of her dogs.
Miller, a male believed to be 8 years old, collapsed in harness Monday night for reasons still unclear.
DeNure couldn't find a pulse and didn't get a response when she performed mouth-to-snout resuscitation. She put the animal in her sled basket and backtracked to the previous checkpoint at Rainy Pass, her heart in her throat and tears streaming down her face.
As DeNure mushed back to Rainy Pass, her team seemed to sense her urgency.
"Our team speed was really good anyway but it felt like they knew we had to get back to Rainy Pass. They flew. They didn't even hesitate. It was like, 'Yep, Mom, we know.' They knew there was an emergency. They hurried."
Near Rainy Pass, Miller opened his eyes.
Once at the checkpoint, she carried a weak and shaking Miller inside.
"They put an IV in right away," DeNure said, and they covered the dog with blankets. For the rest of the night, Miller was weak - even after 10 hours, he was unable to walk, DeNure said.
At 6 the next morning, DeNure scratched from the race - even though, as some had reminded her, she could have dropped Miller and continued racing.
Tuesday morning, Miller was flown to Big Lake, where DeNure's husband, John Schandelmeier, waited.
"When I got him yesterday morning, he was his normal Miller self," said Schandelmeier. "The vets gave him a 100 percent clean bill of health. He's hydrated and everything's fine."
But the vets didn't advance any theories on what might have happened to Miller.
The mystery of Miller's collapse factored into DeNure's decision to quit. If the dog's problem had been diarrhea or a sore wrist or something else vets could pinpoint, dropping Miller and continuing down the trail would have been an option, she said.
"But it wasn't like that. I didn't know if he was going to make it," said DeNure, who didn't get a flight out of Rainy Pass until Wednesday, a day after Miller was flown out.
DeNure, 34, doesn't regret scratching.
"I made a good decision. I made the best decision for my dog and my dog team," she said. "I'm not going to jeopardize my dog team for a dog race. Miller's got a life, and he's going to live and be with us for a long time.
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