And every Fourth of July, America’s biggest night for fireworks, there are many cases of dogs getting scared and running away from home. But after one family pet disappeared for days, a group of kayakers came to the rescue.
On July 9, the kayakers were heading down the Chariton River in Centerville, Iowa when they came upon an unusual sight: a frightened dog, alone on the river bank.
Realizing the dog desperately needed help, they decided to give her a ride. They showed up at just the right time.
“If we wouldn’t have gotten her off the river, there was no way of getting her off that riverbank,” kayaker Shakira Sias told KCCI. “The waters come up so much now that she would have been washed away into that.”
They checked her collar and found out the dog was named Ethyl, a 10-year-old boxer. They were also able to contact Ethyl’s owners, and found out that the dog had run off on July 3, scared off by fireworks, and had been missing for six days.