NEWS AND VIEWS – MATLOCK, DERBYSHIRE UK: This is the sad tale of a “lost” dog whose name is Toby. He lives with a 93-year-old woman who called Derbyshire police twice over the weekend of October 10 and 11th in a very distressed state saying that her dog, a chestnut-and-white Cavalier King Charles spaniel had gone missing two days earlier.
A police officer from the station, PC Tammy Wood, decided to visit the elderly lady to assess the situation and to reassure her. While she was talking to her she reached down to pick something up from the flor and as she did so she noticed Toby underneath the lady’s reclining chair.
He had been there for the full two days and was obviously hungry and thirsty. The report in the Derbyshire Times says that the police officer freed Toby. This implies that he was trapped there. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was strapped. I have written quite a lot about the dangers of reclining armchairs. I would argue that Toby was lucky because he could have been killed under there.
It is not uncommon for kittens and puppies to be killed in the mechanism of reclining armchairs. They go under these chairs because they are nice hiding places but become trapped in the mechanism when their owner sits in the chair and pushes it back. It is a distressing thought that they are crushed to death right underneath their owner.
I would hope that PC Tammy Wood advised the elderly lady to take special precautions to avoid the incident happening again. My personal opinion is that reclining armchairs should not be in homes where there are domestic cats and dogs, especially small and young ones. There are simply too dangerous. I would advise the lady to remove the armchair immediately if that was financially feasible.
