26° and Overcast
(Editor’s note: The following was written by Rob Creehan, of the Niagara Gazette. He works hard and is reliable even if he did cross up Portage and Porter earlier this week and in this story he references a Gorge on the upper river. The Pit Chic reported in a comment on Niagara Falls Uncensored Facebook group that the animals have been reunited with their owner.)
With a blast of winter air and snow sweeping across Niagara Falls on Tuesday, a Water Board employee took the time to help two lost dogs get in out of the cold.
Joe Mascia, a Buffalo resident, was driving toward the Niagara Gorge for work around 7:30 a.m. preparing for a day of work and as he came up to the Pine Avenue and Portage Road intersection, he saw two small brown dogs running by a bus stop. Just seeing them out there caused Mascia to immediately jump out and try to coax them into his warm car.
“You could tell they were scared because they couldn’t come over,” Mascia said, with the temperature around 7 degrees that morning. “You could see their paws were frozen.”
He managed to get the dogs, but after bringing them to the nearby Niagara Falls Kidney Care Center, part of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center campus, one dog initially ran down a drive to one of the hospital entrances while the other ran down Pine Avenue. Trying to get a jacket on them to warm them up was nearly impossible.
Some hospital workers helped care for the dogs, giving them food and keeping them warm while Mascia tried calling the SPCA to no avail, then the Niagara Falls police.
The police sent an officer to pick up the two dogs. He said he did not know where the police took the dogs.
Falls police did not respond to an inquiry about them in time for publication.
It is not known if the two dogs are strays, though Mascia believes they had the same owner since the only time they separated was when he scared them.
“At least they were in a place where they were safe,” Mascia said.
