By Bill Bird
The Naperville Sun via The Chicago Sun Times
NAPERVILLE, Ill. — Everybody’s heard of the firefighters who rescued the cat from the tree.
This is the story of the firefighters who rescued the dog from the recliner.
Ebonyzer the Jack Russell terrier wasn’t his typically frisky, exuberant self Friday at his home at the Sunrise of Naperville Senior Living center. Hobbled by an injured right hindquarter, it was about all the 5-year-old dog could do to limp from the facility’s garden to the room of his master, Ken Makris.
The affectionate and popular pooch was recovering from the pain and indignity inflicted in a freak accident — becoming trapped between the footrest and base of his master’s electric-powered reclining chair.
Makris was startled Thursday after activating a button on the chair that helps to raise him to his feet. Ebonyzer was unlucky enough to be lying beneath the chair’s rapidly descending footrest, which pinned him to the floor.
“He was laying under there. He never lays under there,” Makris said of Ebonyzer. “I heard him go ‘chip, chip’ — just a little squeal — but I couldn’t get him out, and I finally said that we’d better call 911.”
His predicament was dire enough that three Naperville Fire Department firefighters were summoned to the center. After trying to release Ebonyzer with the “jaws of life” extrication device typically reserved for traffic crashes, his rescuers finally freed him by cutting away part of the recliner’s frame with a power saw.
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