Ned Quinn assumed his dog was dead after she was hit by a freight train. But the next day, he was reunited with his best friend.
Last Wednesday evening , 66-year-old Ned Quinn took his black Labrador, Flanagan, out for a walk in a field behind his home in Matteson, Illinois, just as he did every night. And, as usual, the dog ran ahead of Quinn, eager to take in her surroundings.
But that night, Flanagan ran a little too far—straight into the path of an oncoming freight train. Quinn watched in horror as his beloved dog disappeared beneath the train’s wheels, then waited for 20 minutes for the train to pass so that he could search for Flanagan. The only sign of his dog was a severed paw. He couldn’t find her body anywhere.
The next day, the grieving man had given his dog up for dead when he received a phone call: a stranger had discovered Flanagan, bleeding and severely injured, outside of an office building that night. She had limped for more than half a mile to find help.
The stranger brought Flanagan to an animal shelter, where medical staff worked all night to save the injured dog’s life. Thanks to the shelter staff’s work, Flanagan survived the ordeal, and should make a full recovery, in spite of the missing paw.
“That they would do what they did for her, without even knowing where she belonged, says everything I need to know about the shelter. They are miracle workers, all of them,” Quinn told the Chicago Tribune.