As post sequels go, it doesn’t get much better than this!

I was so pleased at how yesterday’s post was received and, serendipitously, the ‘add-ons‘ that appeared as comments to that post.

So how to follow that today?

Chris Snuggs came to the rescue in sending me a link to a recent item in the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph: Touching moment sick elderly man is reunited with his dog.

Luckily, rather than republish the Telegraph item without permission, the video and background information were over on YouTube.

Here it is:

Watch heart-melting moment stricken patient makes shock recovery after being reunited with pet dog.

Published on Oct 18, 2014

James Wathen, 73, and his beloved one-eyed Chihuahua, Bubba, both stopped eating for six weeks after they were separated.

This is the heartwarming moment a seriously ill elderly patient made a “tremendous recovery” thanks to an emotional reunion with his pet dog.

James Wathen, 73, looked doomed when his condition – related to an unknown illness – deteriorated after six weeks at Baptist Health Corbin hospital in Kentucky.

The pensioner was so ill he could barely speak and had stopped eating.

However, all that changed when he managed to whisper to nurses that he was missing his one-eyed Chihuahua Bubba.

His revelation sparked a desperate search for the beloved dog, which was being kept at the Knox-Whitely Animal Shelter.

Pets are banned at the hospital, but nurses managed to sneak Bubba in and then filmed the emotional reunion.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” the hospital’s chief nursing officer Kimberly Probus told WKTV. In a further twist, Mary-Ann Smyth, from the animal shelter, said the dog had also stopped eating when the pair were separated.

“They didn’t think James was going to make it,” she told NBC. “He [Mr Wathen] has done a complete turnaround. He’s speaking, he’s sitting up, he’s eating.

He doesn’t look like the same guy, and the dog is eating and doing better now, too.”

The hospital has allowed Bubba to visit his owner several times since, with staff saying they have both made a “tremendous recovery”.

It’s what this blog is all about. There is no limit to what our dogs offer us; love being at the top of the list.

• Animal rescue
• Communication
• consciousness
• Culture
• Dogs
• Health
• Morality
• People and their pets
• Spirituality