Last week HSUS staff hosted a private awards ceremony for the family of Buffy, a German Shepherd from Oakland Calif. , who was posthumously named the Valor Dog of the Year, the highest honor in the companion dog category of The HSUS’s inaugural Dogs of Valor Awards.
Buffy’s intervention during a robbery saved her owner’s life but ultimately claimed hers. You can read Buffy’s touching story on Humane Society’s website, and also in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune, where her heroic tale was recently recounted.
So many of the Dogs of Valor stories received are testaments of devotion and courage. I have long believed that rescue dogs have a special devotion to the people who adopt them, and in reviewing these cases, I was not surprised to see that so many heroic dogs had been adoptees. For instance, Jack, a finalist in the Dogs of Valor companion dog category—and your pick for People’s Choice—was adopted from the Humane League of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania after being found in a dumpster.
The family that eventually adopted the abandoned terrier mix visited the shelter on several occasions, looking for its perfect match. When they met Jack, they knew they had found exactly who they were looking for. After joining his new family, this little dog—who someone had once deemed disposable—ended up saving their little girl’s life when he alerted her sleeping parents to her first grand mal seizure.
No animal needs to be a hero for us to love them, but these stories remind us that animals come with rich emotional lives, and that the differences between us and them are ones of degree and not kind.
BUFFY IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Incredible story, thanks for the inspirational post.