Positivity: Dog helps elderly woman with dementia survive freezing night
Friday, December 7, 2007 at 16:04 EST
A 73-year-old woman suffering from dementia was kept warm by a dog during a freezing night after going missing from her home in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, police said Friday. The woman went missing Wednesday morning before being found Thursday afternoon with the dog near a park in the city of Hitachinaka, some 5 kilometers from her home.
She is believed to have stayed outside overnight with the dog. “Her life was probably saved by the body heat of the dog,” a police officer said, pointing out that she was wearing only a thin sweater and a jacket. According to a local meteorological observatory, the lowest temperature Wednesday night around the area plunged into the sub-zero level. The male dog does not belong to the woman but seemed very attached to her, police said.
