Wilson is one lucky dog; Lake Patrol rescues pooch from island
Published: June 12, 2007
Some fishermen called Decatur police to say they had spotted a dog stranded on an island on Lake Decatur near the Baltimore Road bridge. According to kids in the neighborhood, the dog had been there for about a week. Dispatchers called the Lake Patrol office, said lake foreman Joe Nihiser.
“Stephanie (Beck) called me and asked me about going out to rescue this animal, and they took the jon boat, after first going out by land to see exactly where it was at,” Nihiser said.
Stephanie Beck, first shift crew chief, and patrol officer Mary Ann Galligan raided the Lake Patrol office refrigerator for some frozen hot dogs to lure the dog and set off.
“There’s barely any water back there,” Beck said. “We just pulled the boat up right on shore and he only barked at us once, probably because he was scared of the boat. We just kind of started doing little trails of pieces of hot dog and getting closer and closer to him. We were trying to test his demeanor and see what kind of dog he was, whether he was rabid, whether he was mean.”
He wasn’t, she said, only frightened and hungry and thirsty. Using what Beck called their “dog voices” - high-pitched baby talk - the two young women coaxed the dog to the boat and into it and took him back to the Lake Patrol office. Galligan said he was starved for affection as well as food, and snuggled with both of them all the way back.
At the office, they gave him water and only a little food so as not to make him ill. During the rest of the day, he drank bowl after bowl of water, taking naps in between times, waking only to drink more water and eat a little food. After work, Beck took him home to her mother, Jennifer Peterson.
Peterson and Beck gave him a bath, removed ticks, treated his scratches and insect bites, and cut out the matted knots in his fur. Beck dubbed him “Wilson,” thanks to the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away,” where Hanks, stranded on a deserted island, imagines a volleyball to be his companion and names it “Wilson.”
Wilson seems to be a mix of Australian shepherd and perhaps collie and has lost considerable weight but otherwise seems to be in good health. Peterson said he’s friendly, housebroken and neutered. He gets along with her two black Labs, rat terrier - though the terrier has made it plain that Wilson is not welcome on the bed - and two cats. He seems a bit afraid of stairs.
When Beck and Galligan found him, Wilson was wearing a homemade harness sewed together with fishing line and trailing a piece of blue rope, like the rope found on boats.
“He’s such a good dog,” Beck said. “He must belong to somebody.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
If you like this, you'll love Good Animal News:
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: