Brandi the Beagle Survives 70-Foot Jump Off Bridge

After running away and finding herself on a crowded bridge, Brandi only had one way to go: down.

After Brandi the Beagle ran away from her owner and found herself running in traffic, her day went from bad to worse -- and then she jumped off a 70-foot bridge.

Let's back up -- but not before mentioning that Brandi is fine. She just has a lightly bruised tummy because she did a belly flop when she jumped off the bridge. (If you smiled just now, that's okay. It's okay to smile over a lightly bruised tummy sustained during a belly flop, if only for a moment.)

Brandi's trouble with the bridge started earlier that day, when she was taking her usual walk with her owner, Robert Lorenz, according to the New York Daily News. Brandi, who had been abused by her previous owners, doesn't like strangers much, and she didn't like the strangers who approached her on the walk, crowding around her and trying to pet her. She got out of her harness and bolted. 

Unfortunately, she bolted onto the Burlington-Bristol Bridge. It was a poor choice. The bridge was full of traffic, with people -- all of them strangers -- stopping their cars and trying to help her, and there was no way out. 

Except off the side of it. 

“She’s running down the middle of this two-lane bridge with traffic coming at her, she dodges traffic, and finally goes to the side,” Liz Verna, a spokesperson for the Burlington County Bridge Commission, told the Daily News.

It was a 70-foot drop, with swiftly moving currents below. It's a tough leap, for any creature. 

“We have had human jumpers,” Verna said. “I think at least one of them survived, but usually they do not.”

Brandi, however, handled it like a champ. Even with no previous experience on the high dive, or any dive, she nailed the belly flop, dog-paddled against the current, hauled herself ashore -- and promptly hid in the bushes along the riverfront.

Police and witnesses saw her make the jump, and they scoured the area with Lorenz's wife, Alexia -- who was still in her bathrobe, because she had run out of the house like a hero the moment she learned from her husband that their dog was lost. At midnight she finally went home to change out of the bathrobe, and when she returned ... well, let her tell it: 

“I pulled up, and in my headlights, there were her eyes glaring at me in the darkness of the night,” she told CourierPostOnline. “I didn’t want to do anything to scare her, so I slowly grabbed the leash and her treats.”

“I clipped the leash and that was it,” Alexia Lorenz said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle.”

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