This SC pup beat all odds for survival. Now he’s in the running for national hero dog award
Fire danced on the shed walls, sheltering Jake, his siblings and his mother. His mother and siblings escaped unharmed, but a piece of the inflamed ceiling fell on the 3-week-old puppy.
Seven years later, Jake the pit bull from Ladson, S.C., is one of the semifinalists for the 2022 American Humane Hero Dog Awards out of 400 candidates from across the country.
“When we got him out of the shed, he wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. I started doing mouth-to-snout until we got our pet oxygen mask,” said William Lindler, Jake’s handler and one of the firefighters on the scene of that shed fire in 2015.
Jake was rushed to a local emergency vet’s office by a firetruck in Ladson. Jake began breathing on his own on the trip, but burns marred 75% of his tiny body.
His recovery took about three or four months, and on top of that, the young pit bull’s family abandoned him at the veterinarian’s office.
The office manager of the veterinarian clinic told Lindler that the family had been given options to proceed with Jake’s treatment and were left in the waiting room to fill out some forms.
“About five minutes later, they looked into the waiting room and they were gone,” Lindler said. “And they had just left the clipboard blank with the paperwork on it in the chair in the waiting room.”
After finding out what happened, Lindler automatically decided to adopt the puppy.
Jake followed Lindler to the fire station each day and was eventually sworn in as an Honorary Firefighter and the official mascot. The dog usually went with the team for truck rides and visited schools for fire prevention weeks with his dad.
When Jake wasn’t allowed to ride with the team to calls, things got a little messy. The first year Lindler had him, his wife bought Jake a TempurPedic dog bed for the station. Lindler and his team went out on a call and left Jake at the station because Lindler thought it was too late at night to take the dog along.
When Lindler got back, Jake was found standing on top of the kitchen table, staring at the firefighters with stuffing littered around him.
“It looked like it had snowed in the kitchen because he had totally destroyed that bed,” Lindler laughed. “He was accustomed to going with us on the trucks, but it was about 9 o’clock at night so I just decided to leave him at the station. Well, obviously, he did not like that very much.”
Jake was the star of Ladson’s City Hall and the schools during his three years as an ambassador. Although he had been burned badly, he was always happy to promote the positives and help out with demonstrations.
“The (students) absolutely loved him. I guess they thought it was the neatest thing that there was a puppy that wore a firefighter coat just like us and had a little helmet,” Lindler said.
Jake still carries fame today on social media, which led the American Humane Society to reach out to Lindler about entering Jake into the hero dog contest. His Instagram, “jakethefirepibble,” has more than 23,000 followers as of June 7.
“A couple of his canine buddies have competed in it in years past, and I always thought it was cool when they were doing it, but I never thought about, ‘Could I enter Jake? Should I enter Jake?” Lindler said.
Lindler said he hopes Jake’s story has a positive impact on everyone who’s heard it or has met Jake.
“Everyone has some form of scars, but you shouldn’t let those scars define you,” Lindler said. “(Jake’s injuries) do not slow him down one bit.”
Voting is open to choose the seven finalists in the 2022 American Humane Hero Dog Awards and will close July 22 at 3 p.m.
If you’d like to vote for Jake in the 2022 American Humane Hero Dog Awards and see the other nominees, visit www.herodogawards.org.
This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 9:23 AM.
