Jagger, a black lab or mix

Every day, people call in sightings of wandering or "stray" dogs. We don't hear much about them. Even when a lost dog reunion makes a local news paper or TV station, the focus is not often about the person that made the connect. So I don't really know if this is unusual, the way this happened. But it's fun to think about what this guy took the time out of his day to do, and the impact it had.

Man Whose Phone Call Reunited Woman With Dog Surfaces
Published: December 11, 2007

It was a pretty big day in Mac Wilson’s life. He was on his way to tell his boss he didn’t want to work for him anymore. With such an important task at hand you might not think he’d have had time to notice a stray dog wandering aimlessly outside the window of his GO Train. But he not only saw him, he took note of him, taking out his cell phone and calling Toronto Animal Services about the morose and scared canine.


And that was the start of a minor miracle we first told you about last week. That dog, named Jagger, belonged to Karen Peterke. She’d lost her best friend after he was spooked by another pooch in a local park three weeks earlier. She tried everything to find him, including offering a $500 reward, and had almost given up hope.

And then Mac Wilson got onboard that train and passed an area around the Lake Shore, improbably spotting the animal in a place he knew he shouldn’t be. “You just think, do I go to work or do I go on an adventure to save a dog?” he remembers asking himself. “I just looked down, straight down pretty much and he was sitting right beside the grass just kind of curled up.”

His call to authorities led them to find the emaciated and thirsty pooch hiding in a hole along the Don River. They quickly returned him to Karen. But in all the excitement, the man who made that call simply disappeared, swallowed up in the anonymity of a Toronto crowd.

Karen was anxious to find him. And once CityNews aired this amazing story on Friday, she did. We received so many emails and calls about Jagger’s rescue, that one of them led us straight to Wilson. And we led him to Peterke. “If it wasn’t for you actually acting on seeing Jagger, he would not be home and who knows what would happen to him,” she told him, giving him a huge hug.

Wilson was modest in response. “It’s kind of just something that I think anyone would do, you know - saving a helpless dog, you know what I mean,” he shrugs.

The one guest Mac didn’t get to meet was Jagger himself - he remains in quarantine as a precaution while vets monitor his progress. But the hero eyed him through a closed door and pronounced him looking much better than when he’d seen him last. “You could just see in his eyes - like, he had those really sad eyes,” he notes. “But he’s looking really good now.”

So while he didn’t get a lick from man’s best friend, he did receive something almost as good - the $500 cheque Karen promised to her knight on shining GO Train. It came as a surprise to the Good Samaritan, but he gladly accepted it. After dealing with the city’s animal experts, he went in and resigned as planned. And that money will now come in handy.

But Wilson hasn’t heard the last of this story. Karen has promised to keep him updated on Jagger’s progress - a story that would have had a very different ending if not for a man on his way to quit, but who decided not to give up on something far more important.

Katen Peterke, so happy to be able to thank Mac Wilson for his good deed

Source: http://www.goodnewsblog.com/2007/12/11/man-whose-phone-call-reunited-woman-with-dog-surfaces