Miracle dog takes a bite out of death

ST. LOUIS -- Cast into a city gas chamber to be euthanized with other unwanted or unclaimed dogs, it appeared the roughly year-old Basenji mix had simply run out of luck -- and time.

But this canine had other ideas.

When the death chamber's door swung open Monday, the dog now dubbed Quentin -- for California's forbidding San Quentin State Prison -- stood very much alive, his tail and tongue wagging amid the carcasses of a half-dozen other dogs.

Animal-control supervisor Rosemary Ficken had never seen such a thing and didn't have the nerve to slam the door shut again on the dog and fire up the carbon monoxide, the stuff commonly found in vehicle exhaust.

This 30-pound, orangish animal, she believed, beat the odds and should live on.

"She told me, 'Please, take him. I don't have the heart to put him back in there and re-gas him,"' said Randy Grim, founder and head of Stray Rescue of St. Louis, the charitable shelter that took in the dog before taking the animal's story public.

The center euthanizes dogs nearly every morning, typically numbering five to eight.

Each animal is sedated and caged separately, then put into the death chamber that is a little larger than a washing machine.

"You can tell he's really digging it," Grim said Wednesday of the dog. "He has a bed, love, food and water."

And that invaluable second chance.