What seemed like a typical walk after dinner for Mike Jonez and his poodle Eli turned into a lifesaving rescue. Jonez, works as a Contracting Officer Representative for the Department of Public Works at U.S. Army Garrison Yuma Proving Ground. Before and after a long day of work, he takes his beloved standard poodle Eli out for a walk. On Feb. 2, though, Eli did something Jonez didn’t expect.
“Eli suddenly sat down. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to stand up. I was kind of perplexed because he had never done that before. I tugged on his leash and he just sat there.”
Jonez wondered if his dog was hurt or scared. They were about a quarter of a mile away from the house on a familiar street. Then Jonez thought Eli might be looking for the cat that lived there. That’s when he heard a faint sound.
“It reminded me of an injured animal.”
Then the 65-pound dog who at first didn’t budge did something else, “He stood up, put his feet against the wall and started sniffing up in the air. Like he could smell something. That clued me in that maybe there was something on the other side of the fence that got his attention.” At that point Jonez looks over the fence.
“Directly below me, there’s an elderly woman laying on the ground, face down, she was coherent, but she couldn’t move.” Adding, “she was faintly repeating, ‘help me, help me.’”
As luck would have it, Jonez didn’t have his phone. He let the woman know he was going for help. He and Eli ran back home, and he returned to call 911 and walked into the yard to remain by the injured woman’s side.
Jonez said the traffic from the busy street drowned out the woman’s voice, who was face down, with her glasses broken and unable to move. If it wasn’t for Eli, the woman would have likely not been rescued. She had been there since before lunch and Jonez and Eli found her around 7 PM. The woman and Eli have met several times while on his daily walks. In fact, she was counting on Eli to be on a walk as her hope of being found.
“She asked, ‘who is this?’ and I told her, ‘It’s the man with the brown dog.’ She said, ‘The brown dog Eli?’ and I said ‘yes.”’ Jonez said that’s when he could hear the emotion in her voice. She responded, “I was so hoping you guys would come by.”
Jonez said their daily routine takes them by her house twice a day and that day they were her guardian angel. The woman had been pulling weeds before falling and had to be hospitalized in the intensive care unit for her injuries.