Wendy Carpenter, a Southeast Thurston County firefighter, puts a animal rescue oxygen mask on her half-English, half-French bulldog, Pippa, during a demonstration at the Littlerock Fire Station on Wednesday afternoon.
Wendy Carpenter, a Southeast Thurston County firefighter, puts a animal rescue oxygen mask on her half-English, half-French bulldog, Pippa, during a demonstration at the Littlerock Fire Station on Wednesday afternoon.
Wendy Carpenter, a Southeast Thurston County firefighter, takes a animal rescue oxygen mask off of her half-English, half-French bulldog, Pippa, during a demonstration at the Littlerock Fire Station on Wednesday afternoon.
Pippa, a 2-year-old half-French, half-English bulldog, sits next to three different sizes of animal rescue oxygen masks that were part of a large donation by Northwest Invisible Fence to the West Thurston County Fire District on Wednesday afternoon at the Littlerock Fire Station.
LITTLEROCK — When a firefighter carried Scooter, an 8-year-old shih tzu, out of a smoke-filled trailer in Grand Mound last May, she was limp in the man’s arms and not breathing.
The dog’s owner said later that she knew for certain her pet was dead.
One of the West Thurston Fire Authority firefighters, however, placed a small, child-sized oxygen mask on the dog. Within a minute, Scooter lifted her head and was able to breathe on her own.
The story of the West Thurston Fire Authority firefighter’s canine rescue was picked up by several regional news outlets and eventually Donna Snow, an Olympia woman, read the story.
Snow said she had previously seen on the news firefighters in another state using specialized oxygen masks for pets, so she began doing research online about how to get local departments equipped with such masks.
Eventually, Snow found “Project Breath,” a movement that aims to put pet oxygen masks in fire departments across the nation by the company Invisible Fence.
The Olympia woman then contacted Lanette Dyer from West Thurston Fire Authority who, Snow said, “took the ball and ran with it.”
Now, eight months later, every fire station for the West Thurston Fire Authority, Southeast Thurston Fire Authority, as well as the East Olympia Fire Department and the Tenino Fire Department has a set of three pet oxygen masks — small, medium and large, suitable for cats or dogs.
Wednesday morning at the Littlerock fire station, firefighters, members of local media, and Invisible Fence employees, along with several dogs, saw the oxygen masks and how firefighters would use them to revive cats or dogs.
The oxygen masks, which resemble those used for humans, have extra room for the snout of the pet.
The mask has a tube that attaches to an oxygen tank to be used in the same manner the firefighters used last May to save Scooter.
The goal of Invisible Fence, said Georgia Welch, who has worked for the company for several years, is to provide the pet oxygen masks to every fire department to make it easier for first responders to save people’s pets.
“They are clearly a part of the family,” Welch said.
So far, she said, Invisible Fence has provided more than 2,000 masks to departments around the country. Each set of three masks are valued at about $60, she said.
