Heroic Rat Terrier Puppies - Pocketpuppy.com

Roger Hanson of Sand Creek stands in front of the pen where he nearly lost his life, if not for the heroics of his three miniature rat terriers, Jack, Mary and Jill.

Farmers choose dogs for a variety of reasons. Some need hounds that are adept at working livestock. Others select a retriever to accompany them on their favorite duck pond. And there are some who just want a watchdog to lounge around on the front step. Roger Hanson will take a farm dog that stands just above his ankle and makes a lot of noise.

Hanson was on his farm north of Sand Creek loading the last of his herd's two Holstein bulls into a trailer to be hauled away last Nov. 25, a Monday afternoon. The bulls were about two and a half years old, Hanson says, and he'd been delaying the selling of them, hoping for an upswing in the market. He decided he couldn't wait any longer, though. He was only feeding a small herd of steers and had sold his cows two years ago. Hanson really had no use for the bulls anymore and finally decided to sell them.

Hanson had backed a trailer into the pen holding the two bulls. The curious critters were hanging around the back of the trailer, so Hanson says he decided to try to crowd them into the back end.

"That was the first mistake," he admits. "The smallest one, as soon as I came around the corner, he had his head down. When they do that, then you're in trouble."

Hanson started for a stationary feed wagon that sits in the middle of the pen, hoping to seek shelter before an imminent attack. But the testy bull caught Hanson before he could climb completely into the wagon.

"He butted me in the back," explains Hanson, "and, of course, then they just don't let up."

Hanson was nearly into the feed wagon, but the hornless bull had him wedged in between the slanted bars that made up the walls of the wagon. Its relentless pressure prevented Hanson from clawing his way further into the feed wagon.

"They've got just real big heads," Hanson informs. "And terrible necks. Man, they've got a lot of strength in their necks. It felt like I was being hit with a car."

As Hanson lay their helplessly being pummeled, the smaller bull's partner joined the fracas, and his hope for escape nearly vanished.

"Then I saw my leg break," recalls the farmer. His left leg, wedged between the bars, had been rammed by one of the bulls and bent out at a wicked 90-degree angle. Hanson's hope continued to wane.

"You know, you get that feeling that you're pretty much done," he concedes grimly.

At that point, Hanson passed out from the pain. Chris Dosch, who rents a house from Hanson and lives just down the road from the farm, was helping Hanson load the bulls. He immediately leapt over the fence into the pen, hollering and waving his arms, but the bulls paid no attention, remaining focused on their already-prone victim.

Hanson came to seconds later near the front of the wagon, laying on the tongue.

"They were standing right on top of me," Hanson recalls, "with their heads cocked just like a robin looks at a worm. Both of 'em were bellering with their tongues out and carrying on."

Hanson's wife Jean was in the house working when she says she looked out the kitchen window to see her husband flying distortedly through the air. She ran out of the house, and Dosch told her to call an ambulance. Jean turned back and went into the house, but called neighbors for help instead of dialing 9-1-1.

Release the hounds

She then hustled back outside, terrified that the bulls would ruthlessly maul her husband to death before anyone could divert their attention from him. Jean ran straight to her husband's truck, where Roger had locked up the couple's three miniature rat terriers, feisty dogs Roger had left in the truck lest they create more commotion when loading the bulls.

"They zeroed in on the bulls," Roger states of the dogs, named Mary, Jack and Jill. The terriers chased the pair of bulls away from their master, out of the pen and harassed them all the way up to a pasture behind the Hanson farmyard.

"Just like that they were gone," Hanson says of the bulls.

Relieved that Roger was still breathing, the Hansons now faced the struggle of getting Roger to the hospital. The couple doubted that an ambulance could locate their farm on the twisting roads and hilly countryside near the Barron-Dunn County line. In addition, vandals have made a habit of tearing down road signs in their neighborhood, Jean mentions. So the Hansons felt they would be better off driving Roger to the hospital themselves.

Jean drove their Plymouth Acclaim out to the edge of the pen as Dosch helped Roger hobble to the vehicle. Roger somehow crawled into the front passenger seat of the compact car, and Jean drove him away, stopping at her beauty shop down the road to inform customers that she wouldn't be able to make their appointments. By chance, Dale Rheingans, who also rents a house on the Hanson property, was home early from work. Jean, overcome with emotion, asked Rheingans to drive the vehicle to Luther Hospital in Eau Claire.

"She was not in good shape by then, just about hysterical," Roger points out.

Rheingans obliged, and Jean hopped into the back seat. They drove to New Auburn to pull onto Highway 53, but Rheingans noticed that the car was nearly out of gas. He swung the vehicle into Bridge Stop convenience store to get fuel. Jean told Sue Trowbridge, who owns the store with her husband Buckshot, Jean's cousin, to notify the Hanson children of the accident. Karl, Brad, and Jolene Hanson all live in Eau Claire. Kurt, the Hansons' oldest son, lives near the Hanson farm.

Run 'em all

Rheingans pulled onto the freeway and asked Roger how fast he should drive the four-cylinder Acclaim.

"I said, 'Drive it as fast as it'll go,'" Hanson chuckles. His plan was to get pulled over by a state trooper, but on this late fall day, he would have no such luck.

Rheingans accelerated the car to 95 miles per hour, while Hanson tried to steady his broken leg as it wobbled with each swerve of the vehicle.

"It was just like jello," Hanson affirms.

Rheingans ran red lights until he eventually made it to Luther Hospital, where the Hanson children waited along with emergency personnel.

Doctors operated on Hanson's leg that evening, inserting a rod and pins into his broken tibia. Hanson wasn't out of danger, but following surgery doctors were optimistic about his recovery.

Later that evening, Roger's heart suddenly stopped. Doctors rushed in to revive him, but it took five minutes until his heart would finally begin to beat on its own again. The physicians induced Roger into a coma, and told Jean they had done all they could. His outlook was bleak once again.

Hanson's body was filling with fluids as he lay in the coma. He ballooned to nearly 190 pounds, up from his normal 140 pounds. Besides the leg, he also suffered from broken ribs, a shattered pelvis, and chipped bones in his hips. Doctors also diagnosed Roger with a blowout, when the colon and intestines are stretched out into a pocket in a person's side.

Bucking the inevitable one more time, Hanson awoke after about five days in a coma, Jean says. Roger remembers tubes spider-webbing from all parts of his body, some pumping fluid from his body, others pumping intravenous fluids into his body.

Once Roger was in the clear, doctors told the Hansons that Roger could expect to remain on the trauma unit for two weeks, and in the hospital for approximately two months. On Dec. 17, only three weeks after entering the emergency room, Hanson remarkably returned home, on his way to a full recovery.

Looking back

Jean Hanson says she can now see how some divine intervention helped transport her ailing husband to the hospital that November day. Despite some prohibitive circumstances, several events occurred coincidently that contributed to Hanson's relatively quick recovery.

The Hansons say they're fortunate for Rheingans' escort to the hospital, especially when there are many days when he doesn't arrive home from work until late in the evening. Jean also would have struggled to get Roger from the pen without Dosch's assistance.

Roger says he's lucky he passed out momentarily in the pen, as the bulls must have eased off his lifeless body during that time.

He also wanted to lean the car seat back as he endured the excruciating pain on the way to the hospital. But for some reason, neither he nor Jean could force the seat back. Doctors later informed the couple that Roger's lungs would have filled with fluid if he had laid back, making his survival almost impossible.

"A guy should've gotten the helicopter up here, really. I was a lot more hurt than what I thought. I thought I had a broken leg and some broken ribs. I was kinda wrong," Hanson concludes with a chuckle.

Life savers

Hanson's exceeding admiration of doctors at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire is unrestrained.

"Luther is tremendous," he beams. "Their trauma unit is one of the best in the country, and they know exactly what to do."

But Hanson also knows he owes his life to three sidekicks back on his Sand Creek farm. Without three pesky rat terriers, he may have never set foot back on his farm. As Hanson traverses the farm now with the help of a walker, the three terrors race across the farmyard ahead of him and pounce their front feet onto his shins when he stops to converse.

"They just delight in harassing everything," Hanson comments. "Size doesn't seem to matter."

Roger and his family have been long time acquaintances of our families and it delighted us to see that The Chetek Alert did a feature story on Roger and his amazing little Rat Terriers.

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