Dog earns fame with its golden retrieval
NEW YORK: “Good boy, Storm!” a man’s voice says in the video, calling to a golden retriever paddling toward a brown lump bobbing in the water of Port Jefferson Harbor, off Long Island.
Taking it in his mouth, the dog hauls it toward the beach, a moment filmed by his owner on Sunday that has been seen by 5.2 million people and counting on Facebook.
The lump was a fawn, which the dog dragged on to the sand. There it lay, alive but barely moving.
Storm gently nudged the fawn’s belly. It scarcely responded. He nuzzled it again. Nothing. He pawed at its tiny hooves. Then the video ended.
The video footage has launched Storm to sudden social media stardom and sent him on a tour of morning TV talk shows.
Banish any thought that the dog, a sixyear-old English golden retriever owned by Mark Freeley, a personal injury lawyer from East Setauket, New York, might have simply been following his instinct to retrieve. And definitely do not imagine that the dog was hungry.
“I was there, and if anybody knows Storm, they know that’s not in his heart,”
said Mr Freeley, who captured the moment on his phone while out with the golden retriever and his other dog, Sarah, a Border collie.
“He is the most gentle, gracious dog you ever want to meet.”
Mr Freeley said Storm “grasped the deer by the neck — just the way a lifeguard would put his arm over someone’s neck — and dragged him in”.
In the video, Storm licks the deer as it lies on the ground after its ordeal. “It was so touching,” Mr Freeley said.
“It showed he really had a care and was worried about the fawn.”
Mr Freeley said he left to get help. He called a group he knew, Strong Island Animal Rescue League. Frank Floridia, who runs the organisation, arrived with leashes and nets.
The fawn will eventually be returned to the wild, he said. But for now the animal is recovering from many ailments, including subcutaneous emphysema, a condition in which air bubbles are trapped under the skin, making it feel like “bubble wrap”.
The illness can be caused by emotional trauma.