Lion saves life of chihuahua on Melbourne Cup Day

Picture this: A crew of Campbelltown Lions club members are cooking a Melbourne Cup barbecue last Tuesday outside the TAB at Eagle Vale Marketplace.

But why don’t we let our anonymous Lion take us through what happened on this special day on our national calendar:

“Here we were, doing our normal thing, Melbourne Cup barbecue and selling 1,100 trifecta tickets.

We started at 7.30am and we looked like the walking wounded, what with sticks and walkers.

Trisha and myself were selling 550 trifectas each and Alan never worked so hard manning the barbie, cooking 35 kilos of thin sausages, ably assisted by Russell.

Our wonderful ladies Judy and Lesley worked their 80 year old hearts out for most of the day serving free and paid-for sangers.

It was a hot, sticky day and a lot of dogs were sniffing around the barbie.

One lady had her Chihuahua there, it was three months old and thought it was going to grow up to be a Great Dane.

She fed it some cooked sausage, in small pieces, which it devoured with glee and the doggie started looking for more.

Our dog loving Lions offered his mother a half thin snag, but before she knew it the little beast had snatched the treat and tried to swallow it.

Next thing comes a scream from the mother (we have edited out the odd blue word): “It’s choking, it’s choking – help someone.”

The woman put her hand into the gasping beast’s mouth and the dog bit her and drew blood.

And so another scream: “It’s bit me, help.’’

Being the chivalrous kind, I ran over to help the dog and the wounded woman.

I looked down the choking beast’s throat and saw the sausage embedded in the back of its little mouth.

I tried to get my fingers into the gaping orifice, but it bit my thumb and drew blood for the second time.

While this was going on the mother had jumped up and called for a fork but finding none grabbed a large set of tongs from the hotplate.

The distressed dog must have seen mummy with the tongs and bolted for the kerb in the carpark.

Being a dog lover, I threw myself down in front of the charging animal and crash tackled the Chihuahua. This provoked a third scream from the dog’s owner: Someone help the man.

People rushed to my assistance as there was blood on the pavement from our chewed fingers.

There was also money rolling around everywhere after it fell out of the pockets of my apron.

A very kind lady who had rushed out of the TAB to assist was just about to knee me in the back as she thought I had had an epileptic seizure but I assured the milling crowd that both the dog and myself were OK.

The little dog was having dessert by licking the blood off the footpath and the mum was ever so grateful as she said I saved her dog’s life.

And she also apologized for the blue language.’’