'Lost' Dog Leads Stranger to Elderly Owner That Fell Down Hill
You’re out walking in a remote area. It’s early in the morning, the sun is just starting to warm up the world and the birds have started singing. It’s beautiful out, the perfect time for a stroll.
Suddenly, your companion falls. He tumbles down a hill and lies there in the dirt, unable to get up again.
Home is roughly a mile away. What do you do?
You’re in the middle of nowhere and have no phone. You can’t call for help. You can’t carry your friend. You have to decide whether to run back and try to find someone or stand guard in the nearby road and hope someone drives by.
It’s a difficult decision for anyone to make, but the fact that it was made by a dog makes it that much more impressive.
The pup sat in the dusty road for around 7 hours, his retractable leash still attached but sitting in the dirt next to him.
A dog sitting in the middle of a road, not moving, should be a red flag. An attached leash without an owner should be the second.
Fortunately for both the dog and his elderly owner Paul, a man named Marty Hall Junior spotted the dog as he drove through the hills where they’d gone walking.
Finding the situation suspicious, Hall stopped his truck and tried to coax the dog with food. The dog refused to move, panting in the midday sun, but not about to leave his post.
Hall started calling out, guessing that maybe someone was nearby. After turning off the engine of his truck and calling again, he heard something.
“Hold on, I heard something,” he says in the video he recorded. “Hello? You all right?”
He found the older gentleman lying in the dust. Fortunately Paul was still able to call for help, but the sun had been beating down on him, too, for hours.
“I saw him just kinda… I’m trying to comprehend what to do in that moment,” Hall recalled.
Hall couldn’t help the injured man himself, since — according to WJLA — there was a second dog that wouldn’t let him near Paul. So he went to get Paul’s wife instead and contacted authorities, who were able to arrive and help.
Hopefully Paul will be able to recover and continue his strolls with his pups, but he also knows just how devoted his dogs are. Fortunately Hall knew to stop and investigate, or this story could have turned out to be tragically different.
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