“This post contains affiliate links, and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.”
A woman who was driving on Interstate 95 on Saturday, September 14, got involved in a rollover crash that made her Labrador take off. Days after the unfortunate event, the owner-dog duo finally gets reunited.
Debbie Dawson recounts the whole accident to NBC 6 South Florida. She recalls as she saw a car cross over the pylons on I-95, right in front of her.
She tells the news outlet, “I saw her car coming and I just said, ‘I’m going to die,’ and honest to God, that’s all I remember. And then I just remember waking up in the middle of 95.”
Upon impact, Dawson said she blacked out, and she later learned that her car flipped over four times during the crash.
Her car’s windows shattered during the rollover, and that’s how Moose, Dawson’s 15-month-old black Labrador took off.
Dawson said her first instinct was to run after her beloved pooch, but a witness stopped her, due to her injuries.
“I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking about myself, I just could think about him,” Dawson said.
Thankfully for Dawson, she was immediately taken to the hospital, with only minor injuries.
However, Moose was missing for days. And they couldn’t find him because his Apple AirTag came off during the accident.
But Dawson and her family were determined to bring Moose back home.
“We were riding around moments after we were done searching, it’s lightning and thunder and starting to rain and knowing this guy was out there, it was terrible,” Corey Dawson, Debbie’s husband, said.
While the husband and wife were busy searching for Moose, their children took to social media to look for Moose, hoping that someone has spotted the pooch.
Walker Dawson, Debbie’s son said, “I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night, same as my dad, with people who were trying to join in and give us tips and tricks.”
The family’s efforts didn’t go in vain. Because on Tuesday, September 17, they got a call that Moose was finally found, alive!
Oakland Park firefighters saw Moose hiding in the brush off the highway, about a mile away from the crash site.
The poor pooch had his paw pads injured due to the fact that he was running on hot pavement. He was also visibly traumatized and scared, but otherwise okay.
The firefighters helped Moose go home and be reunited with his family. Debbie said the firefighters who rescued her pooch “deserve medals”.
“They promised me that they would find him and they did, and I cannot, cannot thank them enough for all their work and hard effort, not giving up.”
Now that Moose is safe and the whole Dawson family is once again complete, Corey had a message to drivers,
“The takeaway for me would be, because a lot of lives have been changed in this thing, is if you would just look when you’re driving, that’s the reality,” he said.
