No, It Wasn’t Lassie In This Emergency Trapped Kansan’s Pooch Brings Him Telephone

For about six hours Wednesday night, Mike Glenn lay trapped on his western Shawnee driveway, out in the cold, under his Oldsmobile.

All he could feel were bits of gravel biting into his back and the weight of his car pushing down on his chest. His legs stuck out from under the car.

He had been changing the oil when the jack slipped out of place. Earlier he had taken a tire off the car, so although the full weight of the car was not upon him, he was still unable to slide out.

As he lay there, the sun went down. He wondered when his wife would return from work or a passer-by might stop. His dog Brandi curled up next to him.

Brandi knew a little sign language. Glenn’s wife, who is hearing-impaired, had been teaching her a few simple tricks, such as sit and stay.

That gave Glenn an idea.

“Get me the phone, girl,” Glenn asked the black and white springer spaniel. He gestured with his one free hand toward the porch, where the phone and a 100-foot cord were within view. “Pleeeeeease get me the phone, pretty girl. Brandi dog. Brandi dog. Get the phone!”

Glenn spent hours pleading with Brandi. Then she delivered.

She grabbed the phone’s receiver and trotted over to the car, dropping the receiver within Glenn’s grasp.

“I don’t know how she knew what I was talking about, but I guess after four hours of coaxing, she figured it out,” he said Thursday from his home.

Glenn reeled the telephone in, but the bottom of the phone, the portion with the dialing buttons, got stuck on a tire.

“I thought, Oh no! After all this! What can I do with just the receiver?” Glenn said. “But I was able to pull it little by little. I got it close to me, and I felt for the right numbers to push.”

He called his mother-in-law in Olathe, Kan.

“He didn’t call 911 because he thought it was a stupid thing he did,” said his wife, Cynthia Glenn. “He figured my dad could just come by and help him out.”

But Cynthia Glenn’s mother, a registered nurse, feared he might be seriously hurt. She called 911 and sent firefighters and paramedics to the house.

The Glenns’ house is on an isolated, dark street with neighbors every half-mile or so. Mike Glenn said he didn’t know what to think when he saw searchlights beginning to flood his front yard.

“I thought, ‘Oh God, what did my mother-in-law do?’ ” said Glenn, a mechanic. “I was so embarrassed.”

Firefighters followed the phone cord, and a team of them lifted the Oldsmobile. They pulled Glenn out and asked whether he was OK.

“I was bruised and had grease all over my face, but that’s it,” Glenn said. “I knew I didn’t break any ribs or anything, so I didn’t go to the hospital.”

An official with the Johnson County Emergency Communications center, which took the 911 call, said he had never heard of a dog fetching a phone.

“It’s really incredible,” said George White Jr., a communications specialist who worked Wednesday. And hard to duplicate.

“We haven’t been able to get her to do it since,” Cynthia Glenn said.

Glenn isn’t sure just how long he spent under the car. He said that he began working on it about 3:30 p.m. and that it was still light out when the car fell. It was about 10:30 p.m. when rescuers arrived. His wife, who had to walk to a cousin’s house from work when Glenn didn’t show to pick her up, got home about 11:45 p.m.

The couple has three dogs, Hercules, Brandi and Noches, and two cats, Oreo and Kalee.

“We’re animal lovers, if you can’t tell,” Cynthia Glenn said. “We love them all, but Brandi is my hero now.”