Adopted pets turn into family, neighborhood heroes

Digger, a hound mix adopted from The Haven for Dogs in Lexington, Ky., saved a neighbor in the middle of a snowstorm earlier this year.

Peaches, a boxer-shepherd mix transported from a high-kill shelter in Tennessee to Capital Area Humane Society in Lansing, Mich., saved Jeremy Noss when he had a stroke several months after adopting her.

No one pays it forward better than a rescued pet. Proof? When USA TODAY Pet Talk columnist Sharon L. Peters asked Pet Smart Charities to contact the hundreds of rescue groups on its e-mail list and send her examples of animals that, once adopted, turned into family or neighborhood heroes, more than 200 responded. Here are three of the amazing tales:

Digger points the way to a rescue

He was just a puppy, barely 10 months old. But Digger knew something was terribly wrong. And he did what he had to do to make sure the right things happened to save a life.

It was a bitterly cold and snowy wee-hours morning in Lexington, Ky., early this year. Digger (named for the obvious reason), a hound mix who was adopted from local rescuers The Haven for Dogs the previous summer by teacher Teresa Oney, began whining, insistent on going outside. That was unheard-of behavior for him.

Oney finally decided Digger must have had an upset stomach, so she got up and let him into the backyard. But oddly, Digger positioned himself on the deck and did nothing but stare intently at the back fence. He wouldn't enter the house when he was called, and when Oney walked out to coax him in, he moved away, keeping eyes trained on that one spot, utterly silent. As the woman turned to go inside to warm up, she heard it: a weak "Help me" coming from the other side of her fence.

Oney called 911, then dashed around the block, where she and police discovered that her elderly neighbor had become confused, wandered into the darkness in her nightgown, slipped in the snow and couldn't get up.

Digger, the dog whose known history started in a Walmart parking lot where he was passed as a tiny puppy from someone who didn't want him to someone who ushered him into his new life, had awakened from a dead sleep and developed a complex strategy.

"Ordinarily he'd bark and bark if something grabs his attention," Oney says. "It was because he was so still and made no noise (once outside) that I was able to hear her. He seemed to understand he needed to be quiet."

Digger was inducted in October into the Kentucky Veterinary Medical Association Hall of Fame. And next month he'll be honored by the county police as a 2010 hero.

Peaches' licking proves lifesaving

Maybe it was fate. Some might think so.

Jeremy Noss, a salesman from Holt, Mich., went to an adoption event in 2008 seeking a youngish male dog.

He found himself drawn to an adorable female puppy and spent some time with her, but he concluded he'd hold out for the slightly older male he'd intended to adopt.

Off he went to his car. He stuck the key in the ignition. But he couldn't erase the image of the boxer/shepherd mix, a refugee from a high-kill shelter in Tennessee who was taken in by the Capital Area Humane Society in Lansing.

Back inside he went. And Peaches became his. "From the get-go, she was special," Noss says. She was house-trained in two days and breezed through Canine Good Citizenship training.

One day in 2009, Noss returned home from a chiropractic appointment feeling unwell, and he lay down. Peaches, not yet 1, alert and worried, settled in beside him. Next thing Noss knew, Peaches was licking him and licking him; pushing her away didn't deter her. She was so relentless Noss finally arose and realized he could barely walk or talk, and one side of his face drooped. He was having a stroke, caused, he later learned, by a dissected vertebral artery.

After months of physical therapy, Noss, 32, is "back to nearly normal." He figures he owes Peaches his life. "She knew something was wrong before I did. I don't know if I would still be here if it wasn't for her waking me up."

Inky the cat signals for help

Lying at the bottom of the basement steps, bloodied from head lacerations, unable to move one arm, neck completely numb, Glen Kruger was in deep trouble.

The pull-down trapdoor and stairs to the attic, located at the head of the cellar stairs, had disengaged and slammed him downward as he'd come up from tending to the woodstove at midnight.

His wife was asleep at the far end of the house, behind a closed door, and his shouts went unheard.

The only witness, his only hope, really, was a cat called Inky, an abuse case adopted years earlier from the nearby SPCA in Wellsville, N.Y.

"Inky stood at the top of the stairs, eyes huge, staring," Kruger recalls. The 5-degree air was blasting in from the attic opening; he was going into shock.

"Go get Brenda," he yelled at the cat, not especially hopeful.

Inky raced off, hurled himself at the bedroom door repeatedly and yowled like a jaguar until the woman awoke, followed the cat and discovered her severely injured husband.

Kruger was rushed to the ER, then to a spine center. He had a fractured neck, dislocated shoulder and broken arm.

That was in 2009. The mechanic has been unable to work since the accident, and he's 4 inches shorter than before, but he's alive and "getting around pretty well," thanks to a cat.