Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker Saves Dog

Mayor-Booker-saves-dog

If you’re like me and many dog lovers out there, your dog is probably living a better life than you. He enjoys the benefits of veterinary health insurance while you still stand in line at the clinic. He eats only the best organic dry food while you gobble up cheap produce. At night he takes up more than his share of the bed, wrapped snuggly in the most expensive blanket in the house, while you lie uncomfortably pressed between the edge of the bed and the wall.

Well, it turns out not everyone is as enlightened as we are! According to both The New York Daily News and ABC News on the afternoon of January 24 WABC-TV reporter Toni Yates and her camera crew were in a residential New Jersey neighborhood shooting footage for a story when they noticed a dog outside alone on the front porch of a house. The medium-sized adorable mutt had been left on cold concrete and was shivering from the biting winter weather. They were concerned, but figuring there probably wasn’t much they could do, they continued on to their next location. Hours later they passed by the same house again, only to see that the dog was still outside. Temperatures were predicted to drop as low as 12 degrees Fahrenheit that night and apparently this dog was the second chilly dog the news crew had noticed in the neighborhood that day. Thankfully, the first dog’s owners had eventually come home, but if they had already seen two freezing helpless hounds in one neighborhood on one day, they could only imagine how many more there could be.

Armed with a news crew and a twitter account, Yates decided to give the frosty Fidos of the world a voice. At 4:38 PM she tweeted Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker with the following, “#pets cold Yay! Newark for its heat help. Make pet owners get their dogs out of the cold. Saw 2 dogs freezing @eyewitnessabc7@CoryBooker.” Soon enough, concerned citizens began re-tweeting the message to Booker and by 7:56 PM the Mayor had arrived on the scene to personally help the neglected canine, with police officers in tow.

They soon found out that the dog’s name was Cha Cha. As Booker stroked the trembling animal he spoke to WABC-TV News, “This is brutal weather. This dog is shaking really badly and you just can’t leave your dog out here on a day like this and go away and expect them to be OK. Hypothermia on any animal including a human animal will set in pretty quickly. So this is very sad. You can just feel the dog shaking pretty badly.”

Booker wasn’t just throwing around hyperboles. Thousands of dogs die every year from being left out in the yard during extreme weather. When Melody Whitworth, a representative from Dogs Deserve Better, an award-winning nonprofit national organization was asked to define what’s too hot or too cold for a dog, she answered, “It is generally appropriate to have dogs outside in temperatures that range from 40 to 80 degrees.”

Whatever temperature it was, it was obviously way too cold for poor Cha Cha. The Mayor hastily swept up the dog in his arms and carried him to the nearby squad car. As he placed the pup in the back seat he said to the driver, “If you’d crank up the heat I’d appreciate it.” Booker then called the owner (whose cell phone number had finally been obtained) and reproved the young man for his actions. The owner claimed that he was
in Queens visiting friends and did not know that his dog was outside. He recounted his phone call with Mayor Booker to WABC-TV News, “And I’m like, he’s like, yes this is Corey Booker, and I’m like Hi! Yeah. And I’m like, Who?! Why he callin’ me?! And he tells me about Chach outside and I’m like yes of course.”

Since Booker is known to have his sights on the Senate, cynics and party poopers everywhere have dismissed the dog rescue as a political stunt. This is understandable since this is by no means the first we have seen of Booker’s Good Samaritan routine. In April he pulled a woman out of her burning home. In June he was one of the first people to tend to a pedestrian who had been mowed down by a car in traffic. Inarguably, a suspicious amount of good deeds attributed to one individual in such a short time frame is bound to raise some eyebrows. However, at the end of the day, what does it really matter as long as Cha Cha’s teeth have stopped chattering?

Written by Chloe Taylor

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Diane Eggleston Ensley
11 years ago

Didn’t know she was outside? Would you leave home not knowing where your children are. Same goes for dogs. They are your responsibility of you choose to have one.

Safari
Safari
11 years ago

Publicity stunt or not, it’s brilliantly highlighted a common form of pet negligence. Well done to those that first spotted the dog, the followers that shared the messages and the Mayor for doing something about it. All dogs are at risk from extreme temperatures but none more so than a lactating mother and puppies left without their mum.

Lisa Bulik Johnson
11 years ago

Political stunt or not, at least he did something about it, unlike many others who had to have seen the dog outside all day!!! Great job Mayor Booker!

Sherri Kowalski
11 years ago

I don’t give a damn if it was a publicity stunt or not. I only care that the dog be kept warm .

soleir26
soleir26
11 years ago

The dog was saved, that is enough for me. Thanks to Major Booker, good job! Shame to the people that always mix politic with everything.

Elaine
Elaine
11 years ago

shame on WABC-TV reporter Toni Yates AND every member of your camera crew. I’m disgusted – if everybody said “that’s not my problem” or “I don’t want to get involved” or “there’s Nothing I can Do” as she and her crew did, the world would be an even sadder, sicker place. If you’d found a rape victim, or a homeless person Toni Yates, would you still have said “there’s nothing I can do” . And as for the dog’s owner – the inarticulate, “like, well” idiot – his dog should be removed from him and re-homed. You make me sick, all of you. And stop, everybody, being so cynical and calling this a publicity stunt. The man DID something which is more than can be said for the rest of you.

SUBSCRIBE TO
DOG FILES

Top Posts

More Articles...

6
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x

Why haven't You Signed up For our Newsletter?

Find out why over 8000 Dog lovers have already Joined!

Receive our newsletter, get special deals & stay updated.