Bichon survives harrowing attack
Felipe Rodriguez says he thought he was hallucinating when an eagle snatched his sister’s little white dog from her yard, flapped its massive wings and disappeared over the trees.
Did he really just see that? He had. Zoey the 3.6-kg bichon frise was gone, taken by a hungry raptor Tuesday afternoon not 15 metres from his sister’s house on the banks of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez said.
“It seemed like something from the Wizard of Oz,” he said. “I’m a city boy. This doesn’t happen in my world.”
Rodriguez said he was by himself at his sister’s home in Bowmanstown, about 130 km north of Philadelphia, and Zoey was playing in the fenced yard when he heard a loud screech, hurried to the door and looked out.
“The bird was holding onto the dog. There was flapping of wings and then it was gone,” said Rodriguez, a 50-year-old healthcare executive visiting from Chicago.
He drove around the neighbourhood looking for the dog, to no avail. Rodriguez assumed Zoey was gone for good.
His sister and her family were devastated when they found out.
“I did nothing but cry all day,” Monica Newhard said.
Heartbroken, she and her husband scoured the woods for Zoey’s body. Little did they know their bitty bichon would be found later that afternoon — a full six km away.
Zoey’s rescuer was Christina Hartman, 51, who said she was driving on a snow-covered back road when she spotted a furry white lump ahead and pulled over to investigate.
“I notice this little frozen dog, icicles hanging from all over. It could hardly move,” Hartman said.
She scooped up the whimpering pooch, wrapped her in a blanket and took her home, feeding the dog two bowls of chicken-andrice soup. Gradually, the bichon warmed up and began to show some spunk. Hartman noticed several small wounds on the back of her neck, and the dog walked with a limp. She had no collar.
“This dog belongs to a family, and I’m gonna find out who owns it,” Hartman told herself.
It didn’t take long. She spotted Newhard’s public Facebook post Wednesday morning — Newhard had uploaded a photo of Zoey — and made an excited call.