Just a week before a German shepherd was killed in a fire on Gail Place, a different dog narrowly escaped the same fate.
Mary Sacco, a worker at Secaucus Animal Hospital, got a call on Feb. 20 that a dog had been trapped in a fire in Jersey City, and that the firefighters wanted to know if they could bring the dog in for Dr. Richard Brady to check out. Sacco didn’t know until later that the Jersey City firefighters had already worked for nearly 45 minutes to revive the Rottweiller after the female dog named Shade had been trapped in a garage fire off Secaucus Road.
Fire Captain Mike Colin and Fighter Walter Milne found the stricken animal at the back of the garage.
Collins apparently covered the dog’s snout with his own air mask as he carried Shade to the street, where the captain of the Hazardous Material team, Bob Thompson, applied CPR. Although some presumed the dog dead, Shade recovered and was rushed to the Secaucus Animal Hospital where Dr. Brady treated the dog for smoke inhalation.
“The firefighters were the real heroes here,” Dr. Brady said later, after determining the dog would recover. “They did everything right. They stabilized the dog, and when we got her here, we put her on the proper medication.” Brady said the dog had a small amount of fluid on her lungs, typical of smoke inhalation.