Puppy returns to South Bend house from St. Joseph River, Humane Modern society

SOUTH BEND — When he escaped through a gap in his yard’s fence, Pinto somehow slipped out of the nice, leather-based collar that his family members experienced purchased him, labeled “Pinto el Vago” — which is Spanish for “Pinto the Vagabond.” 

That inscription was prophetic. The fairly black, brown and white puppy would at some point make his way five miles north to a bank of the St. Joseph River, wherever volunteers and firefighters would rescue him by boat. 

But, Ramona Cruz explained, in the approximately a few many years because they’d bought him from an Amish household, he’s in no way operate off. Then once again, it also was the to start with time they’d experienced a gap in the fence. Cruz, her partner and three young ones, ages 8 to 30, called him “el Vago” because he’d continually roam the yard. 

“He just hardly ever stopped,” she mentioned. 

On Aug. 5, The Tribune described, Clay Hearth Territory took the pooch from the steep embankment the place he’d camped and loaded him — caught times in advance of in a 70-pound cage — onto an inflatable rescue boat and motored a handful of minutes away to the boat ramp at St. Patrick’s County Park.  

It had commenced about a 7 days earlier when the operator of that home on Lilac Road contacted her neighbor, Tribune retiree and long-time pet advocate Gayle Dantzler, who then termed on volunteers from the nonprofit South Bend Shed & Located Pets who routinely lure and save wayward canine. Ann Rudasics and Tina Donica established up a digicam to keep track of him and even heard from a resident just north of the Michigan line who’d tried but failed to capture him.