Dog survives 20-foot fall off overpass and is reunited with his owner

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A lucky dog is back home with just minor injuries after surviving a 20-foot fall off an overpass Sunday. Neighbors in the Humes Heights neighborhood say a German shepherd mix jumped off the Union Avenue overpass and fell about 20 feet onto the ground below. Tonya Martin, who lives a few houses away, said she was leaving to do her regular Sunday shopping when she noticed a crowd of people stopped at the bridge. “I came out of my house and just started to the Union bridge and I saw these cars parked on the side. And I pulled over and said, ‘What’s happened?’ “A girl said a dog had just jumped over, and a guy that was there said, ‘He’s down on the ground,'” Martin said. Martin said the dog was on the ground panting, not moving. She thinks he was in shock. So Martin mobilized a group to go rescue him. They knew he was someone’s pet because he was well taken care of, but didn’t have a collar. When they took him to the emergency clinic on Summer Avenue, they were able to scan him and find a microchip. “Thank God, which happens never,” Martin said. It turns out, the dog’s name was Rocky. Rocky suffered a broken toenail and has a limp, but was otherwise OK after his fall. “I think that we’ve had so much rain that the ground is really soft over there. I think that’s the only thing that saved him,” Martin said. The animal hospital reunited Rocky with his owner, Edras Aguilar, who lives a few blocks away in the same area. “I was driving around the neighborhood looking for him,” Aguilar said. Aguilar said a friend told him some neighborhood kids caused Rocky to escape while he was away at church. Rocky escaped at the beginning of January for the same reason for seven days. No one knows what made Rocky jump off the overpass but Aguilar and Rocky’s rescuers are just happy this dog is back where he belongs. “He made it and it’s a miracle,” Martin said. [protected-iframe id=”8714990fbb64de21c94f2b2ec71a62e3-29519520-12543204″ info=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fwreg3%2Fvideos%2F2055329271162435%2F&show_text=1&width=560″ width=”560″ height=”445″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no”]