Woman, man are dog’s best friends
Published: October 28, 2005
In the heat of a moment, valor sometimes replaces good sense. Rosalie Bennett had one of those moments Tuesday.
Driving down U.S. 19 about 11:30 a.m. just south of Timber Pines, she spied a middling-size dog in the middle southbound lane.
“It was half sitting up and half lying down,” Bennett said.
Bennett whipped her vehicle over to the side of the highway.
“I ran over. I held up my hand to oncoming traffic. It was one of those things. Your adrenaline just starts up,” said the 42-year-old mother, who was driving her 4-year-old son, Zachary, to preschool.
The car that had been trailing Bennett pulled over, too. “I stopped and put on my flashers,” said Roger Mericle, a Timber Pines resident who also saw the dog’s predicament.
He hollered a warning to Bennett. She misinterpreted and asked if the dog was his. It wasn’t.
“He is bleeding all over the place,” Bennett recalled as she reached the canine. “I grabbed my son’s blanket (to wrap him in).”
The pooch trembled. Bennett trembled. The level-headed Mericle directed her to nearby Hernando Animal Hospital on Applegate Drive. She held the bundled dog in her lap as she drove. Mericle followed in his vehicle.
The 17-pound Jack Russell terrier had sustained cuts and a dislocated hip, said the hospital’s receptionist, Lily Rosello. It is expected to recover and was eating on Wednesday, a healthy sign.
Mericle, a dog owner most of his 63 years, opened his wallet.
“The guy said, “I just wanted to help out with money,”‘ Bennett said. “I said, “What a good deed.”‘
Mericle declared Bennett the hero.
“She did the dangerous part,” he said. “You wouldn’t find me walking out on the middle of the highway.”
Bennett acknowledged after the rescue: “I thought, why did I do that?”
For several reasons.
When the Bennett family moved to Spring Hill from Houston three years ago, they brought with them a Jack Russell terrier. It was hit and killed by a vehicle that continued on its way down Spring Hill Drive.
“It might have been prevented had the person stopped,” Bennett lamented.
Of her daring rescue on busy U.S. 19, she added, “I guess I didn’t even think about it. I just thought: What if it’s hit again?
“I would stop for a turtle or a bird if it was alive.”
She said her family has “been known to have a multitude of animals at our house.” The family has a springer spaniel and a shepherd mix adopted from Hernando County Animal Services.
But taking in the road-battered dog is questionable because of a fairly full house.
Mericle has two basset hounds, one of which he said is territorially jealous, so also isn’t in a position to add the Jack Russell.
Mericle inquired at the U.S. 19 guard house at Timber Pines, but no one had reported a missing dog.
Rosello, at the animal hospital, described the neutered male Jack Russell as “a senior pet, brown and white, definitely a sweetheart.” It is not unheard of, she noted, that an aging dog might be cast off.
“We certainly hope not,” she said.
It had no collar or identification.
Mericle stopped by the vet clinic again on Wednesday.
“He came by . . . and wanted to give us more money, but we said, “No,”‘ Rosello said.
Mericle maintains his payment was minimal. “They’re absorbing the cost,” he said of the clinic.
Although the dog’s hip was manually adjusted, whether it will remain in place is questionable. Surgery might be necessary.
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