What started as the same five-mile walk Dan DiCandilo takes every day with his dog Gozier ended with a 911 call and a stranger still alive.
A routine morning walk for a Virginia man and his dog turned into an unexpected life-saving scenario in Ashland, according to local news outlet WWBT.
DiCandilo recently recalled the day when he and Gozier saved a stranger’s life in an interview with WWBT. He said their daily routine had stayed the same for years.
“We walk five miles a day, every day, and we’ve been doing that for nine years,” DiCandilo explained. “Gozier is the child we’ve never had.”
On that morning, though, he said Gozier reacted in a way he had never heard before.
“We were about halfway up Henry Clay heading toward the tracks, as we call it here in Ashland, and she started barking wildly at a house that we pass every single day,” he continued. “The bark had a little cry to it. It was different. It wasn’t a bark I had heard from her before.”
According to WWBT, Gozier was barking at an unconscious woman lying on the front lawn of a home. DiCandilo said the woman was hard to spot from the road.
“It was a woman who was on her back in a white robe, which camouflaged her and made it impossible to see from the road,” DiCandilo told the outlet. “She had no hat. She had no gloves. She had no shoes.”
After speaking with the homeowner and learning the woman did not live there, DiCandilo immediately called 911.
Gozier kept barking in what DiCandilo described as an attempt to wake the woman up, and first responders arrived soon after to take over.
DiCandilo told WWBT that video from a neighbor’s door camera showed the woman had been outside for hours before he and Gozier found her.
“Phone camera on the neighbor’s door showed her crawling on his front lawn at 4:15 in the morning, so we walked by at 7:15, 15-degree temperature, she had been out there for three hours,” DiCandilo explained to WWBT.
He also told the outlet the woman survived after spending time in intensive care.
“The woman, from what I understand, spent a week in ICU, her body temperature was 78 degrees, and somehow survived.”
DiCandilo said Gozier’s reaction showed the kind of instinct dogs can have.
“Dogs are special. They have that sense that we don’t have, and obviously, that was well displayed that morning,” he said. “It’s like a proud father. That’s my little girl.”
The Ashland community later recognized Gozier for what happened that morning. A ceremony for the dog’s bravery was held on March 3.
📸 Credit : WRIC ABC 8News/YouTube
