Saturday, January 27, 2018

#dog - #This is Flamenco and the story of his near death experience ( and some backstory ) https://imgur.com/a/oMJAh


This is Flamenco and the story of his near death experience ( and some backstory ) https://imgur.com/a/oMJAh

Hello. I had nothing to do this morning and I decided I was going to talk about the runt of our family, Flamenco. I often praise his older "brother" Tango, but this time I will talk about Flamenco and the story of how he almost died a few winters ago. I am going to give some background story and going to chat a bit because, why not, but if you want to get to the point of how he almost died, just go at the last paragraph.

So the story began when I first took care of my friend's dog, and how she got a litter of puppies when I was alone with her. One of them was born on my right lap and this is why I decided to keep him, this was Tango. I got Tango when I was homeless and so for the first 3 weeks of his life, he was in the forest, with his mom, aunt, 3 brothers and 1 sister.

Eventually the cops came and told us they would kill the pups and take the mother away if we didn't leave town, so we packed everything, when they were 3 weeks old, we gave away the 2 brothers and the 1 sister, and we left with Tango, Siren ( his brother ), Kylee ( Mother ) and Godzilla ( Aunt ). We usually hitchhiked to get on our way but we had to leave fast so we decided to hop on a freight trains.

His brother left us when he was about 1 yrs old, and the rest of us kept traveling together for another 2 years. We travelled the whole of Canada several time, from one ocean to the other like this for 3 years.

After 3 years, another one of my friend had puppies and I decided to take one, so to keep company to Tango. This was Flamenco.

Flamenco became the runt. He was always somewhat afraid of playing with Tango, and he cowered a lot when things happens. Nonetheless, we loved him very much and became part of our life.

I put a bunch of pictures to go along with the following text all on the same imgur page : https://imgur.com/gallery/r45OF After a few years we settled down, got a job, apartment, and met my wife to be. I didn't want to be the end of the adventure for my dogs, so my wife and I went on long trips with them. So, my wife and I decided to walk from our hometown Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu to Montreal.

We woke up at 6am and followed the train tracks until we arrived around 9pm. We had to walk trough fields, but we mainly walk on the side of the train tracks. Flamenco is also an expert swimmer. We bought a canoe and we often brought him along with us. Tango, being scared of the water, would stay home ( not without making a big fuss about it though ).

We would often go walk and camp in places we had no idea about. Or even just have picnics. We would take our bags, and walk in one direction until we see some forest and then we would camp there or stop and eat, and go back home.

During our 2 week vacation, We decided to walk until we couldn't. So we ended up doing Saint-Jean Sur-Richelieu to Granby. The dogs were tired after 8 days, so we called a ride back home after. Tango was about 8 yrs old at that point so it was a lot for him.

Well, this is the backstory of me and my dogs. In very short.

Now comes the story of how Flamenco almost died. We were on one of our morning walks, it was winter. The river was frozen on the side, but not in the middle. It was till frozen quite a lot and I decided to leave them off leash so they can run a bit.

I usually always leave them on the leash, especially in this area because there is other dogs and joggers and whatnot. But that morning was calm, and there was no one in sight. Although what I didn't see was that there was some Ducks in the water. And my dogs don't have a habit of running after Ducks but that time, Flamenco went right for it. Tango was way further out, playing in the tree's and minding his business when flamenco started running. I immediately saw him and started calling him. I didn't run to him. And you got to understand that, Flamenco, usually listens extremely good. As soon as I call him, he runs for me, usually. That morning, there was something with the Duck that he couldn't let go. I didn't think much of it and just kept calling him. At that point, Tango was running at his side ( Tango heard me yelling and started running to see what the commotion was all about and joined Flamenco rather quickly ). It all happened so quickly, Tango, being older and wiser ( or, just afraid of the water ) stopped way before the ice ended. He slip a few meters in front, and then turned back, and went towards me ( as I was calling him ). But Flamenco kept going and he only tried to stop when the water was about 1 meter in front of him and so he slipped into the water.. The river had a pretty strong current. I knew if I was going to run on that ice, it would most likely break under my weight. I froze, for maybe, a millisecond or something like that. I started to think to myself, if I should go save him. I didn't know what to do, do I risk my life getting him, and at the same time, risking the life of Tango, do I take Tango and count my losses... All this thinking took about a millisecond, it went right quick in my head and I decided to go and try to save him. I started running, I kinda lost track of Tango, I think he was doing some stuff behind me, but anyway, so I ran towards Flamenco, and as I ran, I could see him trying to get back on the ice. As he tried to get back on ice, he would slip, and then fall completely under water. I was very scared the current would take him away, but then I would see his head pop up again, and his front paws trying to grab the ice, and then, head down under the water again, and it did that the whole time I was running for it. I was so scared of my dog dying that way...So I made it onto the ice, and I kept running, hoping it wouldn't break. When I arrived near the end of the ice, I went down on my stomach and started to quickly crawl forward. I knew at that point, the ice could break anytime. This is when Tango started running for me. He came to me, and then I had two dogs to take care of while in that situation. I grabbed Tango's bandana, ( I usually keep the collar with the leash when I unleash them ( no more) and so they both had their bandana. ) and with my right hand, I tried to keep Tango as far away as possible to me and the water, while at the same time, trying to reach with my left hand towards Flamenco. I had to wait for Flamenco to pop out of the water before trying to grab him. It failed a few time, and he would go back under.. Until , a few seconds later I finally grabbed his bandana, and so his head was out of the water, but I had to bring him back on the ice. I was hoping to all gods that the bandana wouldn't break as they sometime do. But it didn't, and I told Flamenco to jump, and he tried the hardest he could while I pushed him towards me by holding his bandana. He got out of the water... We slowly backed away all together from the ice. I put them on leash, and started jogging home.

(NOTE : I just noticed they didn't have their bandana on, could it be that they had their collars then... memories play trick on that one but Il have to trust the picture. )

So this is how my dog almost died under a frozen river. I don't ever put my dog off leash in the winter near water anymore.



Submitted January 27, 2018 at 09:57AM by Neogodhobo
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/DOG/comments/7tdujb/this_is_flamenco_and_the_story_of_his_near_death/?utm_source=ifttt
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)