Dempsey the Boxer Survives Nine Freezing Days Outside in Maine Only to Be Hit by a Car

He went 10 rounds in subzero woods and then got knocked flat by a car, but this fighter survived.

Dempsey the Boxer was named after the boxer Jack Dempsey, so you have to assume that this little guy is not going to go down without a fight. 

And last week, he was in the fight of his life: nine days alone in subzero temperatures, and then he gets hit by a car.  

It started a couple of weeks ago, when Dempsey and his owner Jamie Cyrway visited her parents' house in Maine -- a very cold Maine. Dempsey, for reasons known only to Dempsey, jumped a six-foot fence in the backyard and aced into the woods. Those woods were freezing. Dempsey was an out-of-town Boxer, unused to such conditions. It didn't look good. The family immediately started searching, offering a reward, putting up signs around the neighborhood and on Facebook.

“We went out on snow shoes,” Janet Boothby, Cyrway’s mother, told CBS News. “We went out at night. We took my dog on trails. Jamie and I went through the woods. We had scent stations set up.”

They did everything they could, in short. But still no Dempsey. Eventually, Cyrway, who is a single parent with three kids, had to get back to Maryland for work. She left with her kids, but her family continued the search. 

The days continued to pass, but they didn't give up hope. 

"Jamie and I never gave up on him," Boothby told WMTM.com. "We said, 'Until we have proof Dempsey is gone by being dead or something, we’re not going to give up. Because if we give up, he will die and we weren’t going to do that."

Then, nine days later, a break in the case. A man told others he hit a dog near a farm in the area where Dempsey vanished. Christine Pierce, who heard about Dempsey on Facebook but didn't know the dog, thought she'd go check it out. 

She found tracks in the snow, which led into a shed. She followed them and found Dempsey, who looked "horrible" and "skinny." 

“He wasn’t moving, and when I saw him, I said, 'Dempsey, I found you. I can’t believe I found you,'" Pierce said. “He kind of opened his eyes a little bit and then I knew he was alive. I scooped him up and put him in the back of my vehicle and called his owner Jamie and said, 'I found your dog.'"

Pierce took him straight to Madison Animal Hospital. Dempsey had a broken leg, he had lost weight, his heart rate had dropped, and he was having seizures, but he was alive. 

According to Dr. Darren Richards, Pierce found Dempsey in the nick of time. 

“It’s really a miracle. Nine days in the subzero temperatures that we had, and he’s not a very big dog, so he’s lucky,” Richards said. "I think when she found him, he was probably within an hour or two of dying.” 

Dempsey is recovering from surgery to fix his leg, and he's been reuinted with Cyrway. Her mother praised the community for helping them find the dog.

“We had so many people looking, so many people helping us look. So many people putting food out. People are good people,” Boothby said. “At church, our opening prayer was for Dempsey on Sunday morning, so Dempsey touched the hearts of many, many lives.”

Via CBS News

Read the most talked about news on Dogster:

View the original article here

Boxer Dog with Brain Tumor Gets a Second Chance

When Peyton, a sweet 8-year-old Boxer, experienced two seizures in a day, her family rushed her to the vet, where she experienced dozens more 10-second seizures. The vet suggested that Peyton's human caretakers, Rob and Renee Henderson, take the dog to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Purdue University immediately, because "there was definitely something neurological going on."

At the hospital, Peyton was sedated while they performed an MRI. That was a Friday. The results came back on Monday, and the Hendersons drove back to the university to receive the news in person -- it was that bad. They were informed that Peyton was suffering from a brain tumor and had only a month to live. Even with surgery, there were no guarantees. The Hendersons were devastated.

Things looked grim for Peyton when she began experiencing seizures. Photo by Jon L. Hendricks for The Times.

The following day, however, the family received a phone call from Timothy Bentley, the veterinary neurosurgeon at Purdue who had seen Peyton. He wanted to know whether the Hendersons were willing to let Peyton participate in their canine brain-tumor clinical trials program. The procedure included using a sample of her glioma tumor as a vaccine against it. Additionally, the expensive surgery and subsequent chemotherapy would be free.

The Hendersons are happy to have Peyton in their lives still. Photo by Jon L. Hendricks for The Times.

Peyton's participation will help not only other dogs, but humans who are suffering from gliomas and other brain tumors as well. 

Following surgery, Peyton lost vision in her right eye, but is otherwise doing well. She is no longer experiencing seizures, and Dr. Bentley calls her progress a complete success.

While the trials have yet to reach conclusive results, Peyton is certainly benefiting from them, and will go down in the annals of medicine as a humble canine companion who has proved how much we need dogs in our lives.

Following surgery, Peyton has to relearn a lot of her motor skills, just like a human who has experienced a stroke. Photo by Jon L. Hendricks for The Times.

Via NWI.com

View the original article here

Winners of Book by Bella the Boxer

Our competition last week to win a copy of Bella the Boxer‘s new book, Secrets of a Working Dog: Unleash Your Potential and Create Success, attracted many entrants.

Three lucky readers won free copies of the book, which teaches you how to live successful and well-balanced lives by adopting the techniques that come naturally to dogs of all shapes, sizes, and pedigrees.

And here are the winners, drawn at random via Random.org:

Bianca Prange
For Pets Sake
Teresa

You will soon be hearing from us via e-mail to find out where we should send your books. Enjoy!

Thanks to Bella’s person and co-writer, Ellen Galvin, for providing the books! If you didn’t win, you can go to Bella’s website to find out how to order a copy.

View the original article here

Old Boxer Saves Family From Christmas Eve Fire

Roxy and her very grateful people, Margaret and Andrew MacDonald (Photo: The Cape Breton Post)

A Nova Scotia couple’s elderly boxer is being credited with saving their lives and those of their other three dogs after a fire broke out in their home on Christmas Eve.

“One of our dogs, the big boxer, she’s very old and she’s not well, so she doesn’t move too quickly … she just kinda popped up to her feet, which took me by surprise,” Margaret MacDonald told The Cape Breton Post. Roxy then trotted into the living room, where a fire had started around the Christmas tree.

“She was making sounds that I have never heard come out of her in all of her 15 years. She ran back out to my office and then grunted at me,” MacDonald said.  Roxy ran between the living room and MacDonald’s office making these sounds a few more times before MacDonald decided to take a look.

The entire corner of the living room was engulfed in flames by the time MacDonald saw what Roxy was trying to warn her about. She screamed to her husband, grabbed her purse and the dogs’ leashes, and the MacDonalds and their dogs ran to the back door. But the fire had created a sort of vacuum seal around the door. Her husband had to kick the door in order to open it.

“We’re lucky to be alive,” MacDonald said. “I think there was someone looking over us. I can tell you that because my husband told me when he looked back he saw a red fireball coming at him. Literally, coming through the hall.”

Perhaps she’s right. Maybe someone was looking after them that Christmas Eve — someone even beyond good old Roxy. The MacDonalds lost all their belongings in the fire except two. When they returned to what was left of their home on Sunday, they found two undamaged items: Two angel ornaments. They’re the only belongings that didn’t get scorched.

“How could they be there all in one piece?” an incredulous MacDonald asks.

She will surely be holding those angels — and a certain old boxer angel — very close for a long, long time.

View the original article here