Look at the picture below.
Scrawny though he is, you are looking at the picture of a hero.
His name is Czarue, and he is homeless. But a little girl would be dead if not for this stray pooch.
Matt Blake reports for the UK’s Daily Mail, March 4, 2013, that three-year-old Julia had wandered out of her grandmother’s home in Pierzwin, Poland (below), accompanied by a local stray mongrel called Czarue.
The sun was already setting.
The two got lost as they wandered deeper into a nearby forest.
When Julia’s grandmother Danuta Balak realized the little girl was missing, she raised the alarm, triggering a major search operation as temperatures dropped to -5° C (23° F).
It was not until the next morning that the rescue team stumbled across Julia four miles from her home — clinging on to Czarue and crying for her mother. Both dog and girl were wet from lying on the freezing marshland, but Czarue had kept Julia warm in the sub-freezing temps with his body heat.
Police and fire-fighters said that damp soil and marshes in the surrounding forests made the search especially difficult for the use of search dogs and a police helicopter had found no trace of the girl on the ground.
Fireman Grzegorz Szymonowski said: “This dog is the most important part of this story, he is a hero. It is thanks to this dog that the girl survived the night. We ran around 500 metres, and there was silence. We stood to listen further and we heard the dog and later the crying of a child. We went in the direction and saw the child lying in the shrubs, she was wet because there was water in the forest.”
Julia was taken to Zielona Gora hospital and treated for light symptoms of frostbite. Head of the pediatric ward Kazimiera Barczyk said, “The only unusual symptoms are swollen hands and feet, probably from the frost. A surgeon inspected this and prescribed ointments. This dog, which was with her most probably kept her warm. It lay down next to her when she fell asleep. She was walking and walking, and fell asleep when she got tired.”
Grandma said when Julia and homeless Czarue had become best friends. The girl would constantly bug her grandmother for bread to feed Czarue and said “Granny, the dog needs to come in the house.”
Although the news report didn’t say so, I sure hope that after this incident, Czarue finally is adopted and has a forever home with Julia.
H/t FOTM’s Joseph
~Eowyn
