Heroic Dog, Careless Owner

It's odd, how much we take things for granted. It's odd how different people are when it comes to appreciating companion animals, for example. We've discussed this often. How casual people often are about the animals who share their homes and their lives. We can't quite understand why it is that people so often treat their loyal pets as expendible appendages to be "put down" rather than explore other means to prolong their lives. And then we see those same people with the next generation of pet. Hard not to feel judgemental. Hard to really like these people and appreciate their different value system.

It's odd too how people tend to do certain things which can be inimical to their health and well-being in a really casual way bordering on ignorance. We often see reports of house fires that have tragic ends. Sometimes the causes are explicable and other times they are not. Quite often we read warnings from a local fire department with statistics indicating that the use of decorative candles, particularly when they're left unattended, have been implicated in sometimes-deadly house fires.

I suppose many people have a romantic streak that appreciates the burning of candles. Certainly there are enough of the decorative types sold. As for us, we ensure we have a good supply of plain old wax candles should we need them in case of a temporary loss of electrical power. But just think about how easy it is to be careless around candles; they may throw a lovely soft light enhancing one's surroundings, but they can also be knocked over by a careless movement, a child's unthinking action or they can burn down to the bottom through neglect and cause a fire.

A story out of Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin took my notice today. A disabled Wisconsin woman's cat knocked over a candle that the woman had sitting on a table in her living room. The woman had lost a leg in a car accident three years previously so she wasn't exactly mobile, particularly when resting with her artificial leg removed. This 49-year-old woman was watching television when the cat ran over the back of the sofa she was sitting on:

"And he jumped onto a table that had a candle on it and tipped it over and lighted the artificial plants on fire", she said.

Her 13-year-old dog brought her artificial leg over to her, and then went back for her mobile telephone which the woman used to dial 911.

"She got me outside and then she heard the cat upstairs and she went up there to get the cat and she wouldn't come back to me", Ms. Hanson said at a news conference in hospital, where she was being treated for third-degree burns.

Both pets, unfortunately, died.

Ms. Hanson said she fell off the couch and was unable to retrieve her artificial leg from the table, "so my dog got my leg for me and went and got the phone and brought the phone to me so I could call 911."

How's that for a romantic evening?

In this unfortunate instance it would seem that the fittest did not survive. Pity, since the dog's intelligence appeared to make up for the lack of same of its mistress.