Firefighter revives dog, mouth to snout
Oct-24-2011

When his fellow firefighters carried an unconscious Labrador retriever out of a burning house on Tuesday, Jamie Giese had no medical equipment to revive him. So he went with something he had only seen on TV.
The Wasau, Wis., firefighter leaned in for a close encounter of the canine kind, providing mouth-to-snout respiration to help the struggling yellow Labrador breathe, after it had inhaled a substantial amount of smoke. Kim Carlson watched as her dog was saved by Giese's unorthodox heroics.
"I have never been trained in that,'' Giese told TODAY's Matt Lauer Friday. "I've seen it on TV and pictures in the newspapers and things like that. We thought (the dog) was dead. We could tell he was trying to breathe, and our training for humans is airway, breathing, circulation. We had no tools handy, so it was mouth-to-snout.''
After Giese's successful revival, firefighters placed a human oxygen mask over Koda's snout. He was rushed to the VCA Companion Care Animal Hospital in Wasau and then the Central Wisconsin Animal Emergency Center, where he received fluids and advanced medical treatments. On Wednesday morning, Koda returned to his owners, who are currently staying with family and friends while the damage to their home is assessed.
The 7-year-old Labrador was breathing just fine when he appeared on TODAY Friday. Koda is one of four pets that escaped the fire; Carlson's fiance's 17-year-old son, Dwight Borchardt, helped Cooper the border collie and a pair of cats, Lavender and Mocha, make it out of the burning house.
The fire is believed to have been caused by a malfunctioning box fan, according to the Wasau fire inspector. Dwight Borchardt was the only one home when the fire started spreading around 4 p.m. Tuesday; the blaze causing an estimated $25,000 to $30,000 in damage to the home and another $25,000 in lost belongings. Most of the second floor was ravaged by fire, while the first floor suffered heavy water and smoke damage.

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