Dog adopted from Westside shelter saves new owner after fall
Heel, Lassie. There’s a new courageous canine in town. Meet Peanut, a black and white pup recently adopted from Albuquerque’s Westside shelter. The day after he was adopted, Peanut’s new owner, Andrew BudekSchmeisser, said the dog saved his life.
Budek-Schmeisser, who suffers from frequent falls, wanted to adopt a bigger dog to help him balance and keep him mobile. But little did he know how perfectly Peanut would fit the role — until Budek-Schmeisser fell outside his house in
Belen while his wife was at church.
“I was in trouble,” BudekSchmeisser said. “I hit my head and my windpipe was occluded.”
Because of his head position, Budek-Schmeisser started choking and began to slip out of consciousness.
The world was starting to fade from gray to black, he said.
But then he felt Peanut. The pup worked his way behind Budek-Schmeisser until he could lean on his furry friend. Peanut wiggled under his arm so Budek-Schmeisser could sit up. That’s when another of the couple’s dogs made its way over and helped “lever” him to his feet.
Peanut’s heroism hasn’t gone to his head, though. Although BudekSchmeisser said he fits in “beautifully” with the family’s other dogs, Peanut is still terrorized by their 8-pound senior dog with a broken back.
The white-socked dog can be chatty — with a voice like Scooby Doo, BudekSchmeisser said. But it’s his personality, intelligence and “strength of character” that make Peanut so lovable.
“We live in a world where there is a lot of bad news, there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of hate,” BudekSchmeisser said. “It’s through the hearts of these creatures that we can see love writ large.”