Nice News Story
www.projo.com/news/content/projo_200411 ... a3ca6.html |
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| Ack! They want you to register to read it..... yukkie! |
| Yeah, and they're asking a WHOLE bunch of questions, too! Don't think I want to get THAT detailed with them.
Chris |
| Oh Sorry! I'll try and cut & paste so you can see it!
Hunting dogs keep fallen owner alive in Exeter woods The two yellow Labrador retrievers huddle overnight with their master, and when morning comes one of them dashes off to find help. 01:00 AM EST on Friday, November 12, 2004 BY TOM MEADE Journal Staff Writer The devotion of a hunter's two dogs probably saved his life after he suffered a stroke Tuesday in Exeter, fell and lay in the woods through the coldest night this autumn, state conservation officers said. Steven Goslee's yellow Labrador retrievers, Lily, and her son Jack, huddled against him all night as the air temperature fell to 15 degrees. On Wednesday morning, Jack ran off to catch the attention of another hunter, who summoned help from game wardens from the Department of Environmental Management. John Gingerella, the environmental police officer who answered the call to the Arcadia Management Area, immediately recognized Goslee's dog and his abandoned sport-utility vehicle on Austin Farm Road. He knew something was wrong. "We get calls all the time about dogs running loose in management areas," Gingerella said. "When we got that call, I didn't think much about it until I realized who the dog was and knew it shouldn't be doing that. Those dogs never ever leave their master's side. I called in the search team right away." Normally, Goslee, 51, of Jamestown, and his Labs hunt the Great Swamp Management Area, in South Kingstown, where Gingerella got to know Lily and Jack, and their master's white Ford SUV. Goslee, Jamestown's director of public works, decided to give Arcadia a shot this week. The area he and the dogs were bird-hunting, called Midway, features a series of cultivated fields and meadows, punctuated by patches of woods. It is bounded by dirt roads to the north, south and west. The Falls River flows along its eastern side. A dirt road, with locked gates at both ends, runs straight through it. It's a haven for a variety of wildlife and for pheasants that the state stocks every autumn. Investigators believe that Goslee and his dogs entered the 14,000-acre management area to hunt sometime after lunch Tuesday, said Sgt. Steve Criscione, of DEM's enforcement division. Sometime that afternoon, he suffered a stroke, dropping his shotgun -- a 70-year-old side-by-side, double-barrel -- and falling into the leaves. "I couldn't get up," Goslee said. "The leaves were so slippery." Goslee, now at Rhode Island Hospital, isn't certain about how long he lay in the woods. "I can remember the sunset," he said. "If I had been able to walk, the truck was only 10 minutes away, but I couldn't move. I couldn't even crawl." Goslee said he was wearing a game coat over a T-shirt and a sweat shirt and a pair of jeans. As the sun set Tuesday, the air became deadly cold. Goslee said he remembers gathering leaves around himself. "I was on my left side, on 20-degree dirt," he said. "It was like lying on concrete." Jack and Lily huddled next to him, Lily lying on the lining of his open coat. A two-dog night. At 8:35 the next morning, Jack joined Richard Richer, of West Warwick, another hunter, and Richer's dog in the field. Richer phoned the DEM dispatcher in Providence, who radioed Gingerella, on patrol in Charlestown. The conservation police officer drove to Exeter, arriving around 9 a.m., and recognized both Jack and the white SUV. He summoned other conservation officers and forest rangers, and enlisted other hunters. "We immediately started a grid-search in the field trial area," he said. Nektarios Arsenis, a hunter from Smithfield who joined the search, soon found Goslee on the ground, Lily still beside him. An experienced dog handler and woodsman himself, Gingerella said, "When I approached them, the female dog growled at me. She wouldn't leave him." Ed McGovern, a ranger and dog handler, was able get Lily into one of his dog crates while emergency medical technicians worked to warm Goslee's core body temperature. Goslee remembers "shaking like a leaf." "He was conscious and talking," Gingerella said, "but he wasn't making much sense." "What I find interesting," said Criscione, "is John [Gingerella] having the knowledge of the guy and the fact that his dogs would never leave him. That precipitated the search. I give John a lot of credit." "Steve is a very lucky man," said Sgt. Joe Poccia, another member of DEM's enforcement division who was on the scene. "Those two dogs probably saved his life." |
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