A veterinary assistant is being called a hero after he saved a choking German shepherd. German Shepherd Nadia was out playing fetch with her owners when she swallowed the ball. When she passed out, her owners rushed her to the Fort Smith Animal Emergency Clinic in Fort Smith, Ark. Veterinary Assistant Justin Rouse, just arriving to start his shift, met them in the parking lot. “I saw some emergency flashers on their SUV and the back hatch was opened up, so I pulled in real quick, and I saw their dog kind of, I could see that it was kind of laying there, you know, it was lifeless,” Rouse told 5News. Rouse realized that the ball was still in the dog's throat. “I could feel the ball, so I pushed behind it and pushed up, and it lodged it out,” he said to 5News. After that, he took Nadia into the clinic for oxygen. When Nadia came to, aside from an irritated throat, she was fine. Nadia's owners were shocked and "mind-blown," according to 5News. Rouse said in his eight years working at the clinic, this was the first time he had seen this sort of emergency.
