A guide dog is being heralded as a hero after his quick reaction to an oncoming car saved the lives of his two trainers on Monday.
The 18-month-old Labrador retriever named O'Neil is seen on video turning to alert one trainer behind him of the oncoming car approaching quickly from the rear, while pulling the other trainer, who is blindfolded in the exercise, to safety.
Moments later, a car reverses at high-speed toward them.
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O'Neil's early response to the car prompted supervisor Todd Jurek, the rear trainer who was not blindfolded, to grab the blindfolded instructor, Daniella Alvarado, and with the dog's help, drag her to safety around the corner seconds before the car would have made impact.
The car was being driven by a 93-year-old woman who, after barely missing the guide dog and his two trainers, crashed into a nearby building, the New York Daily News reported.
The elderly driver was not injured in the incident.
Police are still investigating the crash.
"Even from Day One he was special," Alvarado said about O'Neil.
The dog still has to take his final test at the Guide Dogs for the Blind academy, which according to Jurek shouldn't pose a problem considering his actions on Monday.
This isn't the first time a dog has proven to be a hero in recent months.
In March, a 3-year-old Polish girl went missing in a rural area overnight under near freezing conditions. Local firefighters discovered the girl the following morning when they followed her dog's barks.
The dog had reportedly remained with her the entire night,
using its body heat to keep her warm.
"For the whole night the animal was with the girl, it never left her. Remember, it was 5 degrees below zero and the child was wet," local firefighter Grzegorz Szymanski said.
"This dog is the most important part of the story. He is a hero," Szymanski told Reuters. "It is thanks to this dog that the girl survived the night."
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In January,
two dogs kept a lost 6-year-old alive through freezing temperatures in Missouri.
Similarly the boy was discovered the following morning after a 20-degree night.
The child was huddled in shrubs at the bottom of a ditch in the woods behind his house.
In this case, the boy's two dogs, a boxer named Baxter ad a Labrador named Bella, remained with him all night, keeping him warm until authorities found him.