Good Samaritan lends a paw to furry friend

A Saskatoon man will be on Santa’s nice list this year after helping a frigid fido’s frozen feet.

Kevin Baumgartner was driving downtown when he saw a man walking his dog. As he drove around the block looking for a parking spot, he noticed the pair would stop every few minutes and the black lab cross would hop on the man’s bag to get off the cold cement.

“He looked kind of like my dog, and I saw him lifting his paws and I thought ‘oh my god. This is wrong,'” Baumgartner said.

He approached the man and asked him if he had any booties for the dog. The man told him their last pair of boots were torn and he couldn’t afford new ones for his dog Onyx.

Seeing that the man’s backpack was full of dog supplies, Baumgartner knew the animal was loved. So he set off to his friend’s store Pet Planet and shared the story. His friends gave him a discount on a pair of new boots and threw in a couple dog treats.

Baumgartner went back downtown and together, he and the man put the boots on Onyx.

“You could tell right away that the dog wasn’t shivering as much,” he said.

Baumgartner said he posted a thank you to his friends on Facebook and has received thousands of likes from people around the world. He said this isn’t the first time he’s stopped to help a stranger and hopes this prompts others to engage in random acts of kindness.

“With everything going on in social media and in the news and around the world, it’s nice to see a story without the negative stuff that’s going on all over the world,” he said. “Just like when I’ve been in Tim Horton’s before, somebody’s paid for my coffee and doughnut. Little things like that. I think everybody likes to do that. It just feels good.”