A veteran in Ohio has been hailed a “hero” by a local animal shelter after he volunteered to rescue a trapped puppy.
Joe Lawhorn responded to a social media call-out from Ross County Humane Society, after it received a call about the fallen puppy. The 8-week-old mixed breed puppy had fallen down a ravine 80-100 feet, landing on a slate ledge by a waterfall.
Staff from the shelter initially attended the scene but were unable to retrieve the scared puppy alone. “They could hear him crying but not see him because he was too far down,” the shelter wrote in a Facebook post.
“The hero of the day was a friend of the shelter, local veteran and professional cyclist Joe Lawhorn,” it said.
According to a social media post by Lawhorn, he immediately responded to the shelter’s social media plea after seeing it. He set off with son Lincoln in his car to attend the scene as fast as possible. “I threw the man cub in the Jeep and off we went,” he wrote. “Luckily for me, Lincoln knew Amber and was comfortable with her while I climbed down to get the puppy.”
“[The] problem wasn’t getting down, as I looked up holding this tiny puppy, [I thought] how do I climb out of here one handed holding this thing. Needless to say we climbed out,” he wrote. Lawhorn attributed his affinity for “alternative X-game style sports” as the key to his successful retrieval.
According to his wife, “if anyone was insane enough to try it” she knew it would be him. “I left the phone in my Jeep as my wife was sending me screenshots of the post asking ‘you have any ideas’. Little did she know, her husband had just gone over to the cliff to retrieve the puppy,” Lawhorn wrote.
Now, the shelter has named the puppy Kenda and it was transported to the North Fork Animal Clinic by staff to be checked properly. Kenda is now back at the shelter.
Kenda will soon be available for adoption, alongside the other puppies in the litter who have been named in honor of Joe with the names of his cycling sponsors: Kenda, Rudy, Irwin, Marque and Fuji.
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 6.3 million animals enter shelters each year, with 3.1 million of those being dogs. Lawhorn has urged people to consider adopting or fostering from the “swamped” shelter. “If you can’t do either of them, please consider donating,” he suggested in a post.
This rescue is the veteran’s second in the space of a few months, after he saved a puppy abandoned in a national park just seven weeks ago.