Firemen in America

The Associated Press, December 2, 2004
Firefighters, Vet Rescue Dog Stuck in Tire
WACO, Texas: It took the Jaws of Life and a veterinarian, but Cinnamon the Boston terrier is no longer stuck in a tire.

On Tuesday, Wayne Hyde saw his 10-month-old dog's rear quarters sticking in the air, her head plugged into the center rim of a full-size tire.

Trudy Dillinger, Hyde's girlfriend, tried using Vaseline to release the 17-pound dog's head, which seemed bigger than the 4-inch-diameter ring around her neck.

Dillinger called the Bellmead Fire Department. Firefighters tried to cut the tire rim with a handheld metal saw, but they stopped to avoid accidentally hurting the dog.

Then they used their most serious extraction device, a rescue tool called the Jaws of Life, which uses hydraulic power to pry apart or slice open cars when accident victims are stuck.

The firefighters cut the center of the rim out of the tire, then took Cinnamon and her heavy metal collar to the La Vega Veterinary Clinic in nearby Waco.

"These are things you don't learn about in fire academy at all," Fire Marshall Scott Curry told the Waco Tribune-Herald for a Thursday story.

The vets used an anesthetic to relax Cinnamon's muscles and coated her neck and ears in a lubricant.

"The rim looked like it weighed more than the dog," veterinarian Tamra Walthall said. "It looked like a steel Elizabethan collar on her neck."

The dog's head eventually popped out of the ring. She was no worse for the wear, other than a little bruising and swelling around the neck, Walthall said.

Hyde, a 61-year-old plumbing and utility contractor, praised the firefighters and vowed to keep tires out of his back yard.

"There was just that one, and it's not there anymore," he said. "As a matter of fact, it's all in pieces."