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This Rescue Dog Saved Her Owners Life When She Fell Off a Horse
When Tracy Matkea was thrown from her horse in the middle of the desert, she didn’t think that she would make it out alive. Thankfully, her rescue dog put her instincts to use to save her owner’s life.
Matkea was riding her horse on a remote trail with her dog, Becky Jo, when the unimaginable happened. The horse got spooked, bucking Matkea off her back in the process.
“Whether the horse tripped or fell, I don’t know,” Matkea told Inside Edition. “I was knocked unconscious, or I was definitely incoherent. I have zero memory of the whole situation.”
Matkea later learned that her horse dragged her for half a mile in the desert. Eventually, she fell off and hit her head.
“The horse would have been very panicked with me dragging beside her,” Matkea said to Inside Edition.
About 10 minutes after the incident, Becky Jo came running back to the house to alert Matkea’s husband, Butch, where he quickly realized something was wrong.
“He realized, ‘I need to follow her,’ which he thought was really odd,” Matkea explained to Inside Edition. “Sure enough, she led him to exactly where I was, and where I ended up landing would have been somewhere he wouldn’t have been able to look because it wasn’t on the regular riding path.”
Matkea’s husband arrived just in the nick of time to save her life. Matkea suffered a complete scalping, a major concussion, a fractured skull, and a shattered bone in near her eye.
“My scalp was pretty much peeled back,” Matkea told Inside Edition. “I had about 100 staples and stitches to put my scalp back together.”
If it weren’t for Becky Jo, Matkea probably would have died. As a reward, the 4-year-old Australian Shepard collie mix was inducted into the 2017 Purina Animal Hall of Fame. The award signals out dogs who perform life-saving and courageous acts. The Matkea family also received a year’s supply of dog food and a $5,000 reward.
“This really speaks to the close connection that we have with dogs,” Matkea told The Edmonton Sun. “That they would even think to help us in this way, but they really do, especially when you have that close bond.”
In the past year, Matkea has basically made a full recovery. The 56-year-old still suffers some post-concussion symptoms, but is overall just happy to be alive.
“I knew she was an intelligent dog but I would have never, ever, guessed her to do something like this,” Tracy Matkea said to Inside Edition.