Tsunami dogs reunited with owners in Japan
Wednesday, 6 April 2011 13:56
Images of the devastation caused by the recent tsunami in Japan will remain with us forever. It is hard to understand the pain and suffering of those people who lost their friends and families, not to mention their homes and possessions.
It is so nice to hear stories of people being reunited with those who they thought they had lost forever, and today there are a couple of stories in the news about people bring reunited with their dogs which we would like to share with you.
Akane Ito is 28 and before the tsunami, she lived with her boyfriend, his mother and her 13 dogs in a two-storey wooden house in Yuriage, a fishing port almost 200 miles north of Tokyo.
'On March 11, I was upstairs watching TV with my dogs, when suddenly I felt this mighty earthquake,’ she recalls. ‘There seemed to be no major damage, but we were just left without water, electricity and gas.
‘It meant that we had no radio or TV, so we hadn’t a clue that a huge tsunami was about to come racing in. We weren’t worried at all because a few years ago, when we had another big quake, the tidal wave was only about 10cm high.
‘My boyfriend was at work, but his mother and I decided to drive to the nearest shop to buy batteries and water. The puppies were a bit afraid, but we told them it was OK and thought they’d be perfectly safe until we got back.
‘But on the way home, about an hour after the earthquake, people were saying a massive tsunami was coming and warned us to flee.
‘We headed to the mountain, thinking that even if a huge wave came it couldn’t possibly be as high as the second floor, so the dogs would be fine.
‘The day after the tsunami, I tried to go back for them, but the town was still flooded and I couldn’t get through. I had no idea it had been completely destroyed until two days afterwards, when my boyfriend was able to drive us there.
Whilst her boyfriend searched another part of the town for his grandmother, who was later found unharmed, Akane remained, sobbing at the devastation she was witnessing.
There seemed no hope for Akane's dogs, but she refused to give up. She spent every waking hour searching for them and placed adverts on notice-boards, posted appeals on Twitter and Facebook and walked the streets asking people if they had seen any stray dogs in the area.
Eventually, she was rewarded.
The first dog to be found was May, a six-year old female Labrador. She had been seen by a family, bedraggled and forlorn, as they were looking for their missing relatives in a town a mile from Akane's home. They took the dog home with them and looked after her until they saw one of Akane's appeals.
‘I was overjoyed when they phoned me and said May was safe. It gave me the strength to keep looking for the others,’ she says.
She was reunited with a second dog, Momo, a large female poodle, after she was picked up about four miles away from home. A lady had taken her home, fed her and then took her to a pet shop, the owner of which put Momo's details onto Facebook which enabled Akane to track her down.
Akane, Momo and May now live together in a homeless shelter and she continues her hunt for the remaining 11 dogs.
‘For me dogs and cats are exactly the same as a family,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had a child, so I don’t know what parents feel for their children, but they say they are more important than themselves.
‘I feel the same way about my dogs.’
The second story we would like to share with you concerns a two-year-old dog called Ben who survived for three weeks after the tsunami struck, by floating on top of the roof of a wrecked house. He was spotted by the Japanese Coast Guard during an aerial search of the area nearly 2km offshore. Ben was taken to an animal care centre.
Ben and his owner were reunited yesterday after seeing the rescue footage on television. She immediately recognised her dog and alerted authorities.
All of us here at Animal Friends Pet Insurance wish the dogs and their owners well and hope that we'll be hearing more stories like this soon.
