Hero Pit Bull Saves Elderly Woman With Dementia [VIDEO]

Pit bull owners will say that I haven’t been kind to the breed of late.

I’m not going to revisit the debate over whether or not they deserve the reputation they’ve gotten over the past few years.

Merely to share a story about a hero pit bull that saved a woman’s life.

As I was watching “Blue Bloods” last night, Channel 2 had a tease about said dog.
He’d been walking with his master when he sensed something was amiss and found an elderly dementia patient in the woods who’d been missing for a good deal of time.

Had it not been for the dog, she’d probably died of hypothermia.

However, the news tease during “Blue Bloods” did not mention that the dog was a pit. I just happened to recognize it by its features; and figured that, since you may not have heard the story, this was something you needed to see.

According to CBS2 in New York:

An elderly New Jersey woman is safe thanks to a heroic dog.

The woman had been outside in the cold for hours when the quick-thinking canine found her. For 2-year-old “Creature,” it proved to be a life-saving discovery.
Like any other night, the pit bull (first mention of the breed) had to go out to take care of business Thursday.

But within minutes, the dog’s owner said she knew something was wrong when Creature pulled her outside.

“When I brought her back outside, back to the same spot, heard the stick again cracking and that’s when she took off again barking,” dog owner Cara Jones told CBS 2′s Christine Sloan.

“Creature” had come across Carmen Mitchell, who suffers from dementia. Mitchell was laying in the woods about a half a mile away from her Piscataway home.
“I saw a hand pop up to block the flashlight,” Jones said. “I saw she had
mud on her, she was barefoot and I grabbed the dog to bring her back inside.”
Mitchell’s caretaker had just turned her back for a second when the 89-year-old made her way out the front door.

“Words can’t even explain how I was feeling last night,” caretaker Rochelle Mason said.
The elderly woman’s daughter, Christine Mitchell, said she was worried sick.

“Had no coat on, no shoes on and she just took off. We [drove] everywhere, we couldn’t find her,” she said. “Very scared, I lost my voice when they told me they found her.”

Mitchell was in the cold for eight hours Thursday night. Had it not been for Creature’s keen sense of smell, the result could have been tragic.
The heroic efforts of the pit bull are just a clear example of how smart dogs really are.

“They do get a bad rap. You’re always seeing them on the news,” Jones said of the pit bull breed. “It breaks my heart because there are so many dogs who don’t get a chance to be seen or heard, to tell their own story.”

Carmen Mitchell was taken to the hospital and treated for hypothermia. Her daughter said she can’t wait to meet “Creature” and her owner.

Also, it had occurred to me that this story was buried away just before the weather. Usually TV stations will do a “kicker” story just prior to the weather, which in this case was 20 minutes into the broadcast.

Had the dog bitten the woman, it’s probably a good bet you’d have heard about it at the beginning of the cast.

Such is life in TV land.

Again, just thought I’d share.