Here is a photo of the adorable hero herself, a 1-year-old Shiloh shepherd named Tinsley. pic.twitter.com/kJflH76bTN

— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) January 5, 2022

 

Dogs make the world a better place.

Many of us love dogs. Some of us claim that dogs saved our lives. But this story takes things to the next level.

A Shiloh Shepherd named Tinsley just became the first hero of 2022.

The young dog literally saved its caretaker’s life. The story started with an emergency call about a lost dog on the Veteran’s Memorial bridge at the border between New Hampshire and Vermont.

After arriving at the scene, the officers noticed that the dog seemed to have a message for them and decided to follow Tinsley’s lead.

Just a few moments later, they found a totally destroyed car and two seriously injured men.

Soon after that, the officers realized that Tinsley belonged to one of the victims of this accident. She literally saved her owner’s life. There is no doubt that Tinsley’s owner Cam Laundry and his friend would have died without the help of our furry hero.

 

This is Tinsley. She was in a car accident with her humans last night. She escaped the wreckage, got the attention of police, and led them all the way back to the site of the crash. Her humans are being treated and expected to survive. Tinsley is awarded our very rare… 15/10 pic.twitter.com/E3HRQf0sF3

— WeRateDogs® (@dog_rates) January 5, 2022

 

What a brave dog! Not only did she somehow manage not to get injured in the accident, she immediately took action to save her best friend’s life.

Nobody taught Tinsley how to do this. She simply followed her intuition—and became a hero.

And that’s what I love about dogs. We can teach a dog how to roll over or give us a high five, but what really makes dogs so special is their ability to sense the needs of their caretakers without any instruction.

I want to believe that my beloved dog would do the same thing for me. She might not be a shepherd and happens to be slightly overweight at the moment, but I know that she would risk her life to save mine at any time—and I would do the same for her.

The relationship between a dog and its caretaker is one of the sweetest things we get to experience as a human. The magic lies within the parts we don’t understand.

When I lived in Costa Rica, my neighbor told me that my dog would start barking 10 minutes before I came back from work. Sometimes I was gone for an hour, other times for longer, but Snoopy-Girl somehow felt when I was on my way home. I have no idea how she did that.

Another time, I had a friend visiting me who offered to hang out at the beach with Snoopy-Girl, so I could go surfing. After we set up our spot, I grabbed my board and went into the ocean. And guess what my brave little dog did? She tried to follow me, and my friend had a hard time stopping her from continuously getting crushed by the waves.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of that because I was too far out to hear her desperate barking. I was in tears when my friend told me what had happened. That little dog threw herself into shoulder-high waves to save my life. She had no idea that her human was stupid enough to paddle out into the ocean for fun, but she knew that she would do anything to save my life.

And that’s just how dogs are. They don’t care about themselves; they care about their loved ones.

If you want to learn anything about unconditional love, I highly suggest studying the relationships between dogs and their humans (both ways). If you want to understand what letting go of our ego means, ask a dog. If you want to be more present and enjoy the moment, there is no better role model for that than a dog.

Of course, dogs don’t always do what we want them to do. As much as I love my dog, she can be such a stubborn little brat. But I am sure she feels the same way about me. We learned to accept the weirdness of each other.

I don’t enjoy eating dead fish on the beach or rolling in horsesh*t, but she also doesn’t get why I am sitting in front of my computer all day. We are different, we don’t speak the same language, but there is a connection that can’t be put into words.

I wish I could tell my dog Tinsley’s story. I am sure she would follow Tinsley on Instagram and get a poster for her room—but then, I realize that’s not how dogs operate.

Instead, I look up from my screen and guess who was watching me the entire time I was writing this article?

What was your most heartwarming moment with a dog? I would love to read your story.