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By Diane Herbst
Firefighter Jamie Giese thought there was no hope for a 7-year-old yellow Labrador Retriever named Koda when fellow firemen brought him out of a burning home in Wausau, Wisconsin, not breathing and limp. Says Giese: "We thought he was dead."
But suddenly, Koda began struggling to breathe. "We put him down on the front lawn and people were scrambling to get oxygen, and (firefighter) Jared Thompson said to me, 'You know what to do buddy, mouth to snout,'" recalls Giese, who, while untrained in the canine form of CPR, quickly started his first mouth-to-snout resuscitation.
"I started giving him respirations and it worked out great," says Giese, a lifelong dog lover with two rescue mutts. "Thankfully there was a miracle. It worked perfectly."
Giese had only one thought during the mouth-to-snout on October 18th. "He needs to breathe, that's all I could think of, what would I do if a human tried to breathe," says Giese, 36, of Engine Company 3 in Wausau. "It seems surreal it even happened."
Koda — adopted just two days before the fire — was brought to a veterinarian by Giese and Thompson. The pair stopped by later to visit Koda who was sitting up and appeared a different dog. "I had a hard time not smiling the rest of that day," says Giese. "When we stopped by the vet's office it was pretty emotional."
Koda is one of four pets that escaped the fire; Cooper the Border Collie and a pair of cats, Lavender and Mocha, made it out unscathed.
Today, Koda is in perfect health. "He's absolutely wonderful," owner Kim Carlson tells ABCnews.com. "He's got a little bit of cough, and we're assuming it's phlegm from the smoke, but he did real good."
Here is a link to a video on the amazing rescue.
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