Dog’s Pull Saves Neighbor
Friday, December 8th, 2006
Her life spared in retirement from racing in Florida, “Amazing Gracie” the greyhound has returned the favor for a North Myrtle Beach retiree. Ronnie Principato was retrieving Christmas lights from the garage attic at his home Nov. 10 when everything blacked out, the 70-year-old recalled.
“I fell, and if it wasn’t for the dog, I would be dead by now,” he said.
Pam Burton, a close neighbor on Fox Hollow Way, walked along the road with Grace, an almost 4-year-old dog she and husband Alan adopted in 2005. Burton said she and Grace stroll for fun and exercise three or four times a day in whatever direction the dog leads. “She wanted to go that way that day,” Burton said. Grace insisted on pulling Burton toward Principato’s open garage door. They found Principato, who has diabetes, lying unconscious in a pool of blood.
Alan Burton called 911 and rescue crews lined up Principato’s airlift to Medical University of South Carolina, according to his wife of 41 years, Connie.
She praised the “parade here in the kitchen” of neighbors, some of whom prayed together, and others who drove her that night to Charleston that night as her husband was stabilized. Earlier this week, Ronnie Principato, with 20 stitches in his head, spoke of still feeling wobbly, but still in a Thanksgiving mode.
Pam Burton said her family adopted Grace through Greyhound Crossroads, based in Chappells, near Greenwood. The group places retired racers in homes in South Carolina and surrounding states. “She’s a great pet,” she said, noting that greyhounds bark little and don’t require much exercise. “She owns me; I don’t own her.”
He said Grace’s story stands out even more because greyhounds are sight, not scent, dogs, able to see a small, moving object a half-mile away. Werkhoven said each dog possesses 120 million to 220 million olfactory cells in body tissue vs. 5 million in a human’s. When dogs sniff the air, he said, “they get chemical messages coming to them from hundreds of feet to hundreds of yards or further, maybe miles. It’s telling them about their environment that they can’t see.”
“We’re seeing more and more greyhounds because of rescue groups, ” Werkhoven said. “They’re very nice pets. One of the things they’re known for is sleeping.”
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