SASKATOON EXPRESS - Aprilof 13-19, 2015 - Page Volume 12, Issue 15, Week April 13, 20151
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Josie and her hero Dog rescued after jumping from bridge
Last week, Calvin Hamm and Josie saw each other for the first time since the March morning when he pulled her out of the river (Photo by Steve Gibb) Cam Hutchinson Saskatoon Express t was 5 a.m. and the end of Calvin Hamm’s shift. He and the others in a fleet of trucks used to haul snow were heading back to the yard to park their semis. Hamm was travelling west on the Circle Drive Bridge when suddenly the car in front of him slammed on its brakes. With a rear-end collision pending and a truck to
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his right, Hamm swung into the left lane. Suddenly a dog darted out from in front of the car. Hamm knew he couldn’t stop his semi before hitting the dog so he laid on the horn, hoping the dog would run up the road to avoid being hit. Then, something happened that will be forever etched in Hamm’s mind and in the minds of the others on the bridge on that chilly March morning. The dog veered to her left, jumped over the
edge and into the middle of the river below. “At that point, because my trucker buddies were all behind me and we all have CB radios, and all I could hear on my radio was, ‘Holy man, did you see that dog jump over the edge? That dog is so dead.’ I was thinking the same thing, too: ‘Holy crap, I just killed a dog? It was my fault that it freaked out because I honked my air horn. I spooked it, and that’s what I wanted to happen because otherwise I would have
just smoked her,” Hamm said. “She obviously didn’t know she was on a bridge and she was running full tilt, saw the car to the right and got spooked from that and knew something was behind it. It had no other place to go but left. And it jumped over the median and into the river. It was pretty intense.” Hamm returned to the yard, parked his truck and drove home. (Continued on page 4)