There is no animal on earth quite as loyal to humans as dogs. Whereas cats will give you the cold shoulder out of principle, dogs will stick by your side through thick and thin. In the unfortunate case that you die, your pet dog will wait by your side for days. Luckily, dogs are smart, too. Smart enough to know when something is so wrong that they need to run and get help. That’s exactly what happened a few days ago in Florida. A dog named Eeyore led sheriff’s deputies to his owner, an elderly woman who had fallen while out for a walk.
Almost like a real-life Lassie, the dog knew exactly what was wrong, what the cops were looking for, and where to take them to help his owner. When police get emergency calls about missing elderly people, they never know quite what to expect. Many times, elderly people get confused and lost in the process of walking around. Other times, they fall and can’t get up. Luckily for the lady in this story, she had her loyal dog by her side, ready to save the day at a moment’s notice. Let’s learn more about this heartwarming story and how a dog named after a cartoon donkey potentially saved his owner’s life.
Emergency Call
Her visibly distraught husband became concerned when his wife didn’t come home from a walk for over an hour.
©YouTube/ABC7Chicago – Original
According to local and national media outlets, the incident happened on the night of Monday, October 6th. As reported by ABC7 New York, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in Okaloosa County, Florida, received a concerning phone call. A woman’s “distraught husband” had called the police to tell them that his elderly wife was missing. Apparently, she had gone on a walk with her son’s dog but had not come home, even after an hour.
As seen in a clip from an officer’s bodycam footage, the visibly distraught man tells the officer, “She just takes the dog, but she never takes more than 10 or 15 minutes. It’s almost an hour now. It’s over an hour now.” The officer asks him what kind of breed the dog is, but the man only knows that it is about 100 pounds. Luckily, the police didn’t need much more information than that.
Officers Respond
The dog was waiting for the police on the side of the road.
©YouTube/ABC7Chicago – Original
Deputy Devon Miller was already out on routine patrol that night in the city of Destin, in Okaloosa County, when she responded to the call from the distraught husband. After speaking to him briefly, she set out in her patrol car to find the dog. No sooner did she start looking than the dog appeared out of the shadows on a suburban street.
Deputy Miller sees the dog, reports it on her radio, and gets out of her patrol car and approaches it. Eeyore the dog walks up to the officer unafraid. Miller asks the dog, “Hi, baby. Where’s your mommy? Bring me to your mommy.” Deputy Miller then walks with the dog across the street towards a house partially lit and partially in the darkness. At some point, she gets near the dog’s blue leash, which is dangling on the ground. This presumably sets Eeyore into motion, as he begins leading Deputy Miller slowly but surely in a certain direction. Miller follows Eeyore towards a sidewalk. Though the screen is in total darkness at this point, Miller spots the woman. She says into her radio, “322, I’ve located her.”
Injury and Rescue
Without Eeyore’s help, who knows how long the elderly woman would have been out there with a leg injury.
©YouTube/abc7NY – Original
Though still offscreen, Deputy Miller approaches the woman who is lying on the ground. She says, “I’ve got you, ma’am… Can you tell me what happened?” The woman’s answer can’t be heard, but Miller calls for extra emergency personnel, including an EMS. According to ABC7 New York, the sheriff’s office determined the grandmother “tumbled and injured herself while walking her son’s dog,” Eeyore.
Luckily, the unnamed 86-year-old woman was alert and conscious. She did, however, suffer a non-life-threatening leg injury. As such, she was taken by emergency personnel to a nearby medical facility for treatment. Thanks to the helpful lead of Eeyore the dog, the woman was saved before her injury or condition got worse. Considering it was late at night when the fall occurred, who knows what could have happened to her without a faithful dog by her side. As the elderly woman said to Deputy Miller, “He led you to me? He wouldn’t leave, he kept coming back to me… I’m not even his owner. I’m his grandmother. Oh, Eeyore, you’re a good boy.”
Like a real-life Lassie, Eeyore potentially saved his owner’s mother’s life. As the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a statement, “It was a faithful four-legged friend who brought an OCSO deputy to her location.”
