Carlos Osorio
/ Toronto Star
Rocky, with owner Adam Shaw, receives his medal for saving two young
girls who had fallen into the North Sakatchewan River, at the 46th
annual Purina Animal Hall of Fame awards on Monday.
He walked to the stage
on a red carpet bedecked with paw prints, cameras flashing and cheering
onlookers craning to get a closer look at their hero. But when the time
came for Rocky, an 8-year-old husky-Labrador mix flown from Alberta
especially for the occasion, to take the podium, he refused.
And after a few valiant efforts on the part of his owner, Adam Shaw, Rocky curled up behind the podium to receive his medal.
“He’s a bit shy today,” Shaw said to chuckles from the crowd.
A modest hero.
In March 2013, Rocky
jumped into the freezing North Saskatchewan River to save a drowning
stranger, 9-year-old Samara Wagner-Sunshine. Minutes more, Shaw was
told, and the little girl would have been dead.
“I’m as grateful as
any mother would be and beyond,” Samara’s mother, Miranda Wagner, told
the crowd in a pre-recorded video that featured Samara and her
10-year-old sister, Krymzen, showering the big brown dog with affection.
“To me he’s our angel.”
Rocky was one of five animals inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame Monday in Toronto. In the last 46 years, the annual award has honoured 136 dogs, 27 cats and one horse...Keep reading...
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