NEWS & NOTEWORTHY
This article is © 2004- the Times-World Corp.
Date: October 6, 2004 Section: VIRGINIA Page: B1
By Lindsey Nair lindsey.nair@roanoke.com 981-3334
With a 192-pound Great Dane for a pet, petite Angela Crouch has resigned herself to getting dragged around.
But Friday, Crouch couldn't figure out why Zeus wanted so badly to pull her outside. She had no idea that what he was hearing with those big, floppy ears was a human in trouble. As it turned out, 97-year-old Jim Corbin had fallen in his nearby apartment, and no one - except Zeus - could hear his cries for help.
Zeus is already something of a celebrity around Bent Creek Apartments in northeast Roanoke County. Although he almost died of pneumonia when he was 6 months old, he has grown to larger-than-average size for a male Great Dane, Crouch said.
Standing on his back paws, he comes to chest level on a 5-foot-7-inch-tall human, and he can sit on a couch with his front paws still on the floor. Children know his name and flock to pet him; older folks get tickled to watch the massive creature by his owner's side.
Even Corbin has waved to Crouch, 29, and Zeus, 2, from his balcony.
He called Zeus a "lion dog," said his niece, Robyn Puffenbarger.
"I don't know where that girl puts him in her apartment," Corbin has said. "He must take up the whole space."
Friday evening, Crouch took her dog for a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood. Because Great Danes tire easily and sleep for much of the day, Crouch figured Zeus would be ready for bed after their outing.
About 8 p.m., she led him through the back patio doors of her apartment, the same doors she always uses to take Zeus in and out. But after they got inside, the dog walked to the front door and began to whine.
"I said, 'We're going night-night. We're going to bed,' " Crouch said, "And he just sat there and whined."
Crouch decided her dog must need to do his business again, so she put on his leash and let him out the front door. Out on the sidewalk, Zeus plopped his bottom down, refused to move and stared at the apartment building across the street.
And he whined some more.
Crouch thought perhaps the dog was ill, but when he stopped whining for a moment she heard a moaning noise coming from the apartment building across from hers.
"I realized someone had to be hurt because it sounded more like pain," she said.
Crouch, a tissue donor coordinator with a nursing background, put Zeus in his room and grabbed her stethoscope.
Across the parking lot, she saw Joe Santy on the phone and asked if he'd heard the moaning. Santy's girlfriend lives on the first floor below Corbin. Santy hadn't heard anything, but when he walked around the end of the apartment building, he did.
The moaning was coming from an open bedroom window in Corbin's apartment.
Santy tried to open the front door to Corbin's second-floor apartment, but it was locked. So he climbed onto Corbin's balcony and went in the patio doors.
When Santy let Crouch in, both headed to the bedroom and found Corbin on the floor. He was lying in an awkward position and had some deformity to one of his legs.
"He said, 'I've fallen, and it hurts really bad,' " Crouch said.
Corbin asked Crouch how she'd heard him, and she told him that her dog, Zeus, had heard him first. Corbin said, "He's a good dog."
Corbin was taken to Lewis-Gale Medical Center, where he has since undergone surgery for a broken hip and was resting comfortably Tuesday, Puffenbarger said.
Corbin's niece said her uncle retired from the Westvaco paper mill, now Mead-Westvaco, in Covington after 33 years. He was widowed 23 years ago and had never been hospitalized until this year.
On Tuesday, Zeus loped around wearing a medal that he received from Bent Creek Apartments property manager Christine Williams and her assistant, Lydia Allen. They also gave him a toy and some dog biscuits and brought flowers and a card for Crouch.
Williams called Zeus and his owner "neighborhood heroes."
Puffenbarger said she is grateful to Crouch and Zeus because sometimes elderly people lie injured for some time before they are discovered. She believes Corbin's friends would have checked on him, but it may not have been until Saturday morning.
She's told her uncle a little bit about what happened after he fell, and he understands.
"That's the nice lady with the dog," he said, "and she found me."
Caption: Photos by JILL NANCE The Roanoke Times - 1. Zeus, 2, displays the medal he received from Bent Creek Apartments property manager Christine Williams and her assistant, Lydia Allen, after the 192-pound Great Dane heard an injured neighbor's cries for help and refused to budge until his owner heard them, too. 2. Owner Angela Crouch and Zeus are familiar sights at Bent Creek Apartments in northeast Roanoke County. In the past, neighbor Jim Corbin had admiringly called the Great Dane a "lion dog." Little did Corbin know that Zeus would be his rescuer Friday night.
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