
DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060433

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

MAN'S BEST FRIEND RESCUED FROM THE RAVAGES OF A RIVER

The dog was swimming in the middle of the chilly, windswept Lafayette River in Norfolk, just a speck 300 yards from shore late Monday. David Murphy, driving home, spied him barely moving.

Murphy stopped his truck and ran to the seawall along New Hampshire Avenue where a neighbor, Nick Pope, joined him. The two called to the dog.

``He came our way, whining, thrashing around, nearly floundering,'' Pope said.

``That poor little dog must have been in the water for hours, maybe days. Nearing the wall, he turned, and looking for a place to get ashore, swam out into the river again.''

Two other neighbors, Mark Walkup and Don Norris, launched Walkup's canoe and paddled after the dog. In the bow, Norris hauled him into the canoe.

``He was just going under,'' Pope said. ``It was very close. He was not going to make it.''

They wrapped the dog in blankets and towels and Nick and his wife, Helen, took him to a veterinarian, Dr. J.H. Eaton, who gave him an IV. The dog, he said, was about 10 years old.

Shaggy, weighing 20 pounds, he is black stem to stern except for a graying muzzle. He has very large bright eyes and a playful personality.

When introduced Wednesday to a reporter and a photographer, the dog was frisking at the end of a leash in front of Pope's house, paying no heed whatever to the broad Lafayette River across the street. A dog tag was issued by an animal shelter in Middletown, R.I. A friend of the Popes, Jennifer Britting, hails from Middletown. Through a call to her mother, she helped identify the owner as Claire Terry. Pope left a message for Terry on a voice recorder that the dog had been found and rescued.

The Popes have a 120-pound, 8-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, Biscuit. The two dogs get along happily.

``I'd love to find the owner. I know she must be frantic. But if we don't, I'll keep him,'' Pope said.

He looked down at the small black dog.

``You know,'' he said, ``you become attached to these things after a while.''

A very little while in the case of the small, black, brave dog. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

The rescued dog, weighing 20 pounds, is black stem to stern except

for a graying muzzle. He has very large bright eyes and a playful

personality.