Dogs’ miraculous survival lifts spirits in Alexandra
When Peter Dowling saw his wife patting a pillow and calling it Coco, he knew the deadly Taggerty bushfire had broken her mind.
Nina Mortimer’s two dogs were her babies, and on Sunday morning she was told by her neighbours they had not managed to rescue the dogs.
By the end of the day she was in Alexandra Hospital, and Mr Dowling thought his wife was in the midst of a mental breakdown.
He and his wife were away from their house on Saturday, and when they heard about the fires they told the neighbours to take their dogs to safety. The message from their neighbours was “no worries”.
But it was a very different story when they drove into Alexandra on Sunday to meet their neighbours. Mr Dowling said he knew something was wrong as soon as he saw his neighbours’ car.
“I walked past the car and looked in and there weren’t any dogs there and I felt really bad,” he told the ABC.
“I walked into the pub and I looked at them and their faces just fell. They said to my wife ‘we’re so sorry, we just didn’t have the time to get the dogs out.’
“Nina just broke down. She said if the house was probably gone and the babies had died in there, she wasn’t ever going back again.”
Grief can do unusual things to people, and Nina’s mind started playing cruel tricks on her.
She was convinced her dogs were still alive, and when Mr Dowling walked into the relief centre later that afternoon he saw her cradling a pillow in her arms.
“She was saying, ‘The dogs are OK, Coco and Cody are fine, I’ve got them just here’ and she was patting the pillow,” he said.
“I knew she was having a breakdown so I took her to the hospital and on Monday they were booking her into the psychiatric ward.”
‘The doghouse’
Just as Ms Mortimer was being assessed by psychiatrists however, stories began filtering in from Taggerty of a miraculous survival story.
“I got a phone call and the neighbours said there was a rumour going around the CFA there was a house still standing and there were dogs going barking their heads off inside,” he said.
Taggerty residents rushed up to the house to get the dogs out, and what followed not only saved the dogs’ lives but three houses.
“When everyone went up there they found a shed next door that was on fire,” he said.
“And if people hadn’t gone up there and put that out the whole row of houses would have gone up.”
The dogs had been trapped inside the house for over 48 hours as flames engulfed the area, filling the rooms with toxic black smoke and ash. But as Mr Mortimer said: “you wouldn’t have known it.”
“They were fine and they were jumping all over us. We were so relieved and they were so relieved,” Mr Mortimer said.
If the news of her dogs’ deaths pushed Ms Mortimer over the edge, the news of their rescue was the lifeline that brought her back from the brink.
“She’s become a new person, a renewed person,” he said.
“She’s made a lot of new friends, we all have.”
Coco and Cody’s escape has become somewhat of a local legend around the Alexandra and Taggerty region.
“Yesterday a friend from Narbathong came up to me and asked if I’d heard the doghouse story,” Mr Mortimer said.
“Everyone’s calling it the story of the doghouse. I might put a sign up outside saying this is the scene of the famous doghouse.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/13/2490988.htm
Taggerty residents rushed up to the house to get the dogs out, and what followed not only saved the dogs’ lives but three houses.
“When everyone went up there they found a shed next door that was on fire,” he said.
“And if people hadn’t gone up there and put that out the whole row of houses would have gone up.”<<<
God at work again.
Thank you for sharing this miracle with us.
One could almost say the dogs saved the 3 houses.
How awful and sad that these fires even happened.
Is there an I.D. on the arsonist as yet?
Do stay safe and be careful.