Some people would consider Sadie a bad dog. She had been turned away at three shelters before ending up at the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge in Oakland, New Jersey, last September. It was a shelter of last resort for dogs like Sadie.
Nearly 100 pounds – and not being good around men — Sadie was a lot to handle. And that is why Brian Myers adopted her.
“I thought, ‘Let me give this dog a chance, because she’s beautiful; and I think I can work through her issues,’” he told CBS News. He thought he was rescuing her.
But then came a poignant plot twist.
On January 16, Myers fell to the floor, with no feeling on his left side. He could not stand up and was stuck in a crawl space between his bed and the wall.
Myers, 59, had suffered a stroke. And except for Sadie, he lived alone.
“It was really frightening. I couldn’t get up, and I didn’t realize at that moment that I’d had a stroke,” he told the “Washington Post.” “My cellphone was on the dresser about 15 feet away, but there was no way I could get to it.”
He then felt something wet and rough licking his face: It was Sadie.
He was able to grab her collar, and she pulled him out of that space, and most importantly, within reach of his cell phone.
He was rushed to a local hospital in Englewood, New Jersey, and spent a couple of weeks in treatment and rehabilitation. Just before his release, he got a special visitor: Sadie.
“She just immediately jumped on me, was kissing my face, knocked my glasses and my mask off,” he told CBSnews.com. “And I just thought, ‘I love this dog.’‘’
And so, the rescue dog nobody wanted saved the life of the man who saved hers.
Unconditional love and kindness have a way of paying things forward.
Here is the video piece from CBS News:
