By Kathy Dennis Moore
February 20, 2010
Janyna Russelburg and her dog Gus pose in their Henderson home after Gus ran away and was rescued.
Anybody who knows Gus would never describe the mischievous little dog as shy.
So it probably shouldn’t be surprising that when the pug recently became lost after he accidentally got out of his home, he just sat in the middle of North Elm Street until the right person came along.
And fortunately for Gus on that cold Feb. 10 morning, animal lover Maggie Dunn was on the way to her 7 a.m. shift at Methodist Hospital when she saw the pup.
She pulled up near the dog and tooted her horn, but he didn’t budge. “He just looked around like, ‘Where in the heck am I?’” said Dunn, an X-ray and ultrasound technologist. “I couldn’t go by. He was just sitting there freezing his buns off.”
After another honk didn’t convince the dog to move, Dunn opened the car door and called to him. The pup gave her an appraising look and then jumped into her lap — all while traffic backed up behind her.
“He put both arms around my neck and started kissing me,” said Dunn, an animal lover who has three cats and two dogs at her Corydon home.
She drove to work and called hospital security to see if an officer could keep the dog until the animal shelter could be called.
“I said, ‘This dog belongs to somebody,’” Dunn recalled.
•••
While Dunn was rescuing the cold pup, Henderson resident and teacher Janyna Russelburg was warm and snug in bed. Her husband, Bryan, had left earlier, and because it was a school snow day, Janyna slept in until 8 a.m.
“When I woke up, Gus wasn’t in bed with me,” Janyna said of her 20-month-old pug.
Then she realized it was cold inside the house, “the door is hanging open and Gus is nowhere.”
After checking the house, she knew the pup had to be outside.
“At this point I’m panicking. So I threw on a coat and go out in the yard, yelling, ‘Gus, Gus.’”
She’s not exactly dressed for the 27-degree day, wearing just shorts, a T-shirt and snow boots over bare feet. But she runs around her North Elm Street neighborhood, calling for Gus.
Not having any luck, Janyna returns home and gets Bella, their shepherd mix, to make another trek around the block.
Because pugs don’t tolerate extreme temperatures very well, Janyna was especially concerned about Gus’ welfare.
“I worried that he’d get hypothermia, or was run over by a car, or was in a snow drift,” said Janyna, a special education teacher at Chandler Elementary School.
She called her husband, who by then was already at the University of Southern Indiana, where he’s enrolled in the ROTC program.
“He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh. I’ll be there in a minute.’”
•••
Not knowing what else to do, Janyna dialed 911.
“I said, ‘I know this is an unconventional call, but my pug is missing,’” she recalled.
The dispatcher said nobody had reported finding a dog but she took Janyna’s name and number, obviously realizing how upset the pet owner was.
“I was screaming and crying and hyperventilating, because he’s my baby. This is like a lost child for me,” Janyna said.
About the time she yanked on some old sweat pants so she could get in her car and start driving around to look for Gus, the dispatcher called back and said a lost pug had turned up at the hospital.
Janyna quickly jumped into her car and “drove to the hospital in my ratty get-up. I looked like a vagabond.”
At the hospital, she first asked about the dog at the admissions office, where “the lady was looking at me like I’m crazy.” Then dispatch called and told her to go to the emergency room, where the security office is located.
That’s where security officer Tom Antonini, who let Gus ride around in his car with him until his shift ended, had left the dog.
“I’m practically mowing people over” on the way there, Janyna said.
Finally, what seems like an eternity later, she was reunited with her lost pup.
“My poor little baby is cowering over in the corner, shaking,” Janyna said. “The poor thing was clinging to me and started licking my face like he was saying ‘Oh, Mommy, I’m so happy to see you.’”
•••
As the happy pair returned to the hospital’s front entrance, they happened to see Florence Sandefur, a radiology clerk who works with Dunn.
“That little dog was belly up in her arms,” Sandefur said, realizing that the lost dog her co-worker had told her about earlier and its owner had been reunited.
The clerk offered to take Janyna to meet the woman who rescued Gus from the frosty street.
“She (Dunn) said he was sitting in the middle of the street,” Janyna said. “I know in his puggy brain he was thinking, ‘I will sit here until my mommy gets to me.’”
And while Gus’ mommy didn’t get there as quickly as Dunn did, Janyna is grateful that the woman’s quick actions saved Gus’ life.
“He could have been hit; he could have been dog-napped; he could have frozen to death,” Janyna said. “Thankfully someone who’s a dog lover came by.”
•••
While the fear Janyna felt is still fresh in her mind, Gus took less than a day to get over it.
After Janyna brought Gus home, “he slept all day. I think he was traumatized. When we got home, he stayed on the back of the couch right behind me or on my lap all day long.”
Normally he and Bella fight and play, but not that afternoon or evening. The following day, however, he was back to normal, rough-housing with Bella and being his usual active, chewing-everything-in-sight self.
Janyna, though, can’t help but think about how Gus’ escape could have ended differently.
“I couldn’t imagine life without him,” she said.
Bryan, too, who rushed home that day only to learn that Gus had been found, is thrilled that the pup is back home, especially since it was his lack of securely shutting the back door that allowed Gus to get out.
“I was freaking out, scared, nervous,” as he drove home that morning, especially worried that Gus would be picked up by somebody and never returned. “I didn’t know what would happen to him.”
•••
Now, though, the Russelburgs can sit back, relax and wait for Gus’ next big adventure. But they’re taking steps to make sure that whatever the energetic pup does, it will be within their own house or yard.
Completely fencing in their backyard is a high priority. “It definitely is going to be the first thing we buy with our tax refund,” Janyna said.
Source: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/feb/20/hospital-technician-rescues-lost-dog-busy-street
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