![\"Roary](\"http:\/\/www.oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/sdo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/doggirl.jpg\" "\\"Roary")
ROARY the Staffordshire bull terrier turned lifesaver when he saw a deadly brown snake rear to strike three-year-old Ebony Davis.<\/strong><\/p>\nRoary jumped on the 1.5-metre snake, bit it and swung it clear of Ebony and her father in the backyard of their home.<\/p>\n
But the family pet’s bravery almost cost its life.<\/p>\n
As Roary held on, the snake bit him repeatedly on the flanks and one ear before breaking free and slithering under a shed.<\/p>\n
Ebony’s father, Tim Davis, 38, said the dog “did a lap of honour around the yard, with his tail on high, and then he went in the house and collapsed”.<\/p>\n
“As I wiped the venom off his body, his legs gave way and his head came down on the floor,” Mr Davis said. “There was no sign of life in him.”<\/p>\n
Mr Davis put Roary on the front seat of his car and rushed the dog 10km to Kangaroo Flat Veterinary Centre, near his home at Lockwood in central Victoria.<\/p>\n
“He was quite still and I kept stopping to breathe some air into his nose, but I was sure he was a goner,” Mr Davis said.<\/p>\n
“When we got there, the vet told me how expensive the anti-venom was and how slim his chances were with so many bites.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘Money doesn’t matter; he’s saved my little girl’s life. Just get on with it’.<\/p>\n
“A minute later, needles were hanging out of him everywhere.”<\/p>\n
But 10-year-old Roary is a fighter and when the Sunday Herald Sun visited him at home two weeks after the attack, he was running in the yard like a puppy.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had him since he was six weeks old,” said Tim’s partner and Ebony’s mother, Christine Martin, 29.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d lost him.”<\/p>\n
The only sign of Roary’s ordeal is some muscle wastage around his chest, but he is expected to recover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
St Francis of Assisi is famous for many things. One of the precious things he reminds us is that animals are truly a blessing of God’s creation. As we celebrate the feast of St. Francis and the blessing of the animals, what follows is a heart-warming story about a dog who saved the life of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}