POOCH SAVES PAL AFTER WHEELCHAIR ROLLS INTO POND!
He was up to his neck and can’t swim
WHEELCHAIRBOUND Harry Smith thought he was a goner as his electric ride slid into a Florida pond, but the helpless 81-year-old was miraculously saved by his heroic pooch Sarah.
Smith, who can’t swim, was in his motorized chair taking the nine-year-old beagle mix for a walk near their Port St. Lucie home when his chair lost traction on a grass embankment and slipped down the slope toward the water.
Frightened Smith says he desperately began working the controls trying “to back around to get out” of trouble. But his chair went “straight back instead and right down the embankment and dumped me right in the water.”
Neck-deep in the murky water, Smith began yelling for help, but his cries were hard to hear.
However, Sarah leaped into the pond to help him and was frantically barking.
Her howls and yelps were heard by Edward Suhling and his pal Aby “Jacob” Chacko, 49, who also got the attention of Officer Adam Doty as they ran to help.
“The dog was splashing in the water,” says Suhling, 58. “So we both ran over here and I jumped in the water. My buddy grabbed his arms and I grabbed his legs and we got him up on shore.”
He believes they were in the nick of time since Smith’s head was about to slip beneath the surface.
“You could just see it in his face,” Suhling says. “He thought he was dying.”
Smith was checked up, found uninjured and pushed home by a fire department member as Sarah followed.
While Suhling, Chacko and Doty got pats on the back for the rescue, Ed praises the pooch as “the real hero of the day.”
Smith agrees, saying: “I love her, always have, always will.”