Resolute Pooch Helps Save Injured Elderly Woman

NORTH WILDWOOD — Make no bones about it, Aza is a hero.
Out for her walk during the early evening hours of April 11, Aza, a 9-year-old, epileptic, dark golden retriever, decided not to listen to her master, and in so doing, helped save the life of an elderly woman who had fallen in her home in the 300 block of East 10th Avenue.
“Usually I walk the dog after I eat dinner,” said Bill Madle. “I let her walk me. I let her go wherever.”
Aza seemed to want to take her owner on a new route. “I headed up from here, from 12th (Avenue), crossing over 10th and Atlantic on the 10th Avenue side. She kept turning her head, looking,” said Madle about that extraordinary walk with Aza.
As much as her master urged and tugged her, Aza stood her ground. She would not budge.
“She kept turning her head looking. I kept saying, ‘Come on, come on’,” said Madle, telling how he tried motivating the pooch to move along by pulling on her leash. “She kept stopping and turning her head like there was something.”
Finally her owner was able to get Aza across the street where she stopped on the corner and wanted to cross over to City Hall. “I kept saying, ‘Come on, Aza, come on’ because I wanted to walk the other way.” Aza, however, obviously had something else on her canine mind.
Standing there with his defiant dog, Madle finally acquiesced and crossed the street to the City Hall side.
“I let her lead the way,” he said “so when I got closer, about two houses away, I heard what she was probably hearing. It was a small, petite lady paralyzed at her door with her head down. She was saying ‘Help me!’” According to Madle the woman’s cries for help were so weak they sounded more like a cat’s meow.
With the season not yet in full swing, the woman’s street was a virtual ghost town, except for Aza and her master. According to Madle, a large hedge obscured the front door. Except for Aza’s keen hearing, the injured woman would probably not have been heard or seen.
“She was calling out ‘Help me,” Madle said, noting that the woman’s voice was so weak and so faint.
“When I was one house away, then I heard what she (Aza) was hearing. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, it’s an old lady. Is that what she was hearing?’”
According to Madle, Aza led him to a woman who appeared to be in her eighties. She was drenched in blood and had made her way to the front door after apparently falling inside her home.
“She was at her door, kneeled down with her head out the door in a puddle of blood,” he said.
Aza was intent on seeing her job through. She pulled Madle up onto the porch of the injured woman’s house.
Madle immediately called 9-1-1 from his cell phone. While talking to the dispatcher, he was able to flag down two officers from the Cape May County Sheriff’s Department who were driving by, en route to North Wildwood Police Department for prisoner pickup.
Sheriff’s officers called for additional police assistance, along with rescue personnel.
Upon their arrival on scene, rescue personnel were able to stabilize the victim and transported her to Cape Regional Medical Center for treatment of her injury.
City Fire Chief Jeffrey Cole told the Herald that without Aza’s help, the prognosis for the victim might have been far more grim.
“It would have been extremely difficult for a passerby to have seen her,” said Cole noting the hedge in front of the house. “The fact that the whole thing transpired with the dog was instrumental in getting her aid.” Cole added the woman’s condition was “very time sensitive.”
According to rescue personnel the victim had lain there for an undetermined amount of time.
“Whatever led the dog to take her master to the scene was instrumental in us getting the call and responding to it,” said Cole.
With her lifesaving duty done for the day, Aza returned home for her rest. Due to the stress of the day, she suffered an epileptic seizure.
“She saw all the blood and the lady,” said Madle. “We waited there for the ambulance and the police. She saw all the activity.”
“I never go where she wants to go,” said Madle. “I just let her go. I figured there was a cat out and she wanted to go see where the cat was.”
“We’re very proud of her,” said Madle. “The look on her face when she kept looking at me…she knew something was wrong somewhere.”
When asked if they thought their dog was exceptional Madle and his wife Joanne adamantly agreed.
Joanne Madle explained the meaning of Aza’s name. In the Bible, Aza is the name of an angel. In Swahili the name means ‘powerful’.
As a reward for her good deed Aza, the angel who saved an injured octogenarian by being powerful enough to pull her master to where she needed to be, was given her favorite treat – a bath.