Puppy thrown off bridge - Mississauga, ON

Thursday, May 4, 2006

A 9-week-old puppy thrown off a bridge by the heartless driver of a moving pickup truck is lapping up all the attention her rescuers can give. "I was dumbfounded at what I saw," Joanna Jedlewska, 30, said yesterday. "I couldn't believe it." The Mississauga mother, her daughter, Charlie, 5, niece, 4, and nephew, 2, were left wide-eyed Wednesday evening as the helpless, tiny dog they call "Flyer" was tossed into the Credit River near Dundas St. W. and Mississauga Rd. She was driving west at 5:45 p.m. when she and the kids saw the driver of a black pickup "holding the puppy by the skin on the back of its neck. "His arm was straight out of the window," she said.

As the dog-tosser passed her van, "he whipped the puppy over the edge" without stopping, Jedlewska said. "My brain couldn't accept what was happening. "The girls saw it ... they were left wide-eyed," Jedlewska said. "The puppy was yelping ... it definitely sounded terrified and that's what caught our attention."

After turning around and stopping, she looked over the bridge. There were rocks about 30 metres below, "but the puppy was in the water. She was swimming." After driving down a nearby road, they ran 500 metres to the river bank and recruited a man walking his dog. The children began calling "puppy, puppy, puppy," but there was no response. The scared, shivering pup, believed to be either a Jack Russell or a fox terrier, was spotted five minutes later on the shore, miraculously alive and unhurt. Wrapped in the children's swim towels, the soggy furball soon had a full tummy and lots of loving hugs.

Jedlewska and husband Kyle foster children and have "lots of pets," including Maybe, an Australian shepherd which adopted them in 1993 at a New Mexico camp, where police routinely shot at Maybe and other strays.

Peel Regional Police took a report about Flyer, but without a licence plate and no immediate missing pet report, an officer yesterday said she could offer no update.

References

• TorontoSun - May 5, 2006

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