Watch: Good Samaritan Refuses To Give Up, Saves Choking Stray Puppy

By Amanda Thomason March 31, 2019 at 10:51am

Many of us are familiar with CPR for humans — whether it’s because we’ve seen it performed, have learned to perform it, or have had it used on us — but not as many people know how to perform CPR for dogs.

Since dogs are built a little differently than we are, the methods are a little different. Some things, like a “sharp blow” between the shoulder blades or holding a dog face-down, are similar to methods described for young children.

One major anatomical difference is the way the dog’s rib cage is placed, necessitating side compressions. Another difference is that you’re supposed to breathe into their nose while holding their mouth closed to get air into them.

Hopefully you’ll never run into a situation where you have to perform CPR on your pet, but if you’re a dog owner you know all the ridiculous, disgusting and downright dangerous things they like to gobble up.

For one pup in Turkey, it was a seemingly harmless bit of sausage that nearly did it in. A street puppy, the dog had been getting handouts but somehow the food managed to get wedged in its throat.

The shopkeeper who’d been feeding it saw the pup struggling but didn’t know what to do, so he called out for someone to help.

Omer Yilmaz happened to be walking by and heard the shopkeeper’s cries for help, then noticed the puppy. The pup was in pretty bad shape, limp and unresponsive, a gray tongue lolling out of its mouth.

Yilmaz swept the pup’s mouth with his fingers, trying to find and dislodge the bit of sausage that had gotten stuck. Once he removed it, he rubbed the dog’s chest and took it over to a sink.

He splashed water on the pup’s face, either to revive it or clean off its face before giving it mouth-to-nose. Next, he breathed into the puppy’s nose and massaged it some more, trying to get it breathing again.

Thankfully his attempts were successful, and the pup came around. Initially, he looked a little dazed and unsteady, but other footage shows him back with his siblings and doing well.

Yilmaz later told Anadolu Agency that he’d felt the mother dog pleading with him in her own way. He’d felt like she was begging him to help her lifeless puppy.

He also knows what it’s like to not be able to catch his breath. “I know how it feels to lose your breath because I have experienced it,” he said. “I could not resist helping that puppy.”

While the dogs are strays and don’t particularly belong to anyone, people like Yilmaz keep an eye out for them.

“I like taking care of them,” he said. “Other shopkeepers also help them.”

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