SOLON, Ohio (WJW) – Van and Karen Perch adopted their mixed breed dog, Winston, from a local shelter when he was just six months old.
The laid back Winston, said to be great with kids, hates rides in cars but likes to bark at the Amazon delivery truck as it passes through their neighborhood.
He also likes to go out routinely for walks.
“He’s a walker and we are fortunate to have a bike trail and some other things around the area,” said Van Perch. “We usually get in about a two-and-a-half or three-mile walk.”
Sunday’s walk, however, was cut short after Winston found and instantly claimed a whole fried chicken drumstick that had been thrown out along a roadside.
“Once he latches onto food, it’s like an iron jaw so we couldn’t take it away from him,” said Van. “We finally got home, my wife Karen said, ‘lets put him in the backyard and try to keep an eye on him, see if we can snatch it away from him.'”
But rather than give up his prized possession, Winston did his best to swallow it whole.
“Picture the drumstick — the big thick part of it — just lodged in his throat.” said Van. “At first you could hear him wheezing so we were trying to get him to cough it out. He started running around the backyard and got Kem’s attention next door.”
Kem Cook, a next door neighbor and a career nurse who has worked in a hospital emergency department, was out on her patio.
“I saw Winston laying now on his side and I could hear Karen saying, ‘come on buddy, come on buddy,'” said Cook. “She did pick him up and she gave him some Heimlich thrusts, but he was at that point kind of out of it, not completely but lethargic.”
Cook also started trying to perform the Heimlich maneuver, but the drumstick was lodged deep enough that she could not even really see it.
Van found a pair of pliers and tried grabbing onto the bone to remove it from Winston’s throat, but he was only able to get pieces of it out.
And, things were going from bad to worse.
“I think I ran in to get the car keys thinking we would try to get him to a vet as soon as possible, Kem came over and said we don’t have time,” said Van.
The Heimlich may have moved the drumstick enough that, with the dog virtually unconscious, Cook could now reach in, wrap her fingers around it and tug it out.
“I pulled it out and he was floppy … I could tell he wasn’t breathing, and his tongue was so blue it was black,” she said.
Instinctively, Cook said she started CPR.
“I think it’s just, you know, a chest is a chest, a heart is a heart,” she said. “I’ve seen enough videos. I’ve seen people do it and I know that it’s best done when a dog is on his side and he was on his side, so I just went right in the middle of the chest where I knew his heart would be and just started compressing using human principles, hard and fast. Just compress, compress, compress.”
“A few strokes and he came back, and we stopped and all of a sudden he just gasped and I was like he’s, ‘breathing, he’s breathing,'” Cook added.
“I was never so happy to hear him cough,” said Van.
Winston was raced 30 minutes to a veterinary hospital where he was examined and x-rayed and given a clean bill of health.
“They were kind of surprised, you know, it was a combination of reaching into his mouth with a pair of plyers and getting ahold of the bone and pulling it out and the CPR, the chest compressions and everything,” said Van.
Kem said when she got the text showing her a picture of Winston alive and well, she became emotional.
“We are lucky to have good neighbors and we are lucky that the dog is a hearty dog and here we are today and we are able to talk about it,” said Van.