Blind dog rescued from lake by fishing guide

Mike Organ | The Tennessean

NASHVILLE — Fishing guide Brian Carper didn’t have to use a pole to make a big catch the day after Christmas.

All he needed was a soft spot in his heart for a blind dog in trouble.

Carper left his boat to rescue the tiny 13-year-old shih tzu who wandered into Percy Priest Lake. Carper returned the dog to his grateful owners, who had been searching for their beloved pet for 15 hours.

“When we got him back it was a reminder to me that God watches over his creatures both great and small,” said Barbara Gibbs, who along with her husband, Jerry, owns the dog named Tennessee.

Tennessee, who also has a failing kidney and a bad leg, disappeared after Barbara Gibbs let him out around 3 a.m. Saturday to relieve himself.

A storm was brewing, and a clap of thunder frightened Tennessee. He took off running from his home on Stewarts Ferry Pike.

“We started looking for him everywhere with flashlights all over the place,” Barbara Gibbs said.

Tennessee is a special dog to the Gibbses, who are missionaries. They bought him while they were in France, and he has lived with them in both countries since he was a pup.

The frightened pooch apparently did not stop running until he traveled more than a mile and found himself in the shallow water at Percy Priest Lake.

That’s where Carper and two of his clients spotted the shivering ball of fur the next morning.

They were fishing for largemouth bass near Seven Points Campground when they saw something moving in the shallow water near the rocks. It wasn’t a bass, but they weren’t sure what it was.

“It blended in with the rocks because it was the same color; kind of that brownish color the same as the lime out there,” Carper said. “It was in about 4 to 6 inches of water.”

Carper pulled his boat as near as he could, close enough to see it was a small dog. Carper couldn’t get close enough to reach him, so he jumped into the water and grabbed Tennessee.

Carper knew the feeble dog probably wouldn’t make it through the day without being cared for immediately, so he promised his clients he would finish the fishing trip another day.

“I think when (Tennessee) got down there on the bank, because he could barely see, he was like, ‘I just don’t know where to go now,’ ” Carper said. “He was basically stuck in the water. If he would’ve gone any further he would’ve drowned. There was no way I could leave him. I would have felt like such a scumbag if I would have just kept fishing and left him there.”

One of the clients, Jim Schmidt, bundled Tennessee in a towel for the boat ride back to Fate Sanders dock where they had launched.

After Carper gave Tennessee a warm bath, he shared a post on a Facebook group for lost and found pets in the Hermitage area.

“I really didn’t think anything was going to come of it,” Carper said. “I was just going to keep him or give him to one of my other guides. I was going to make sure he was taken care of.”

One of the Gibbses’ neighbors also posted in the Facebook group that Tennessee was missing. A person in the Facebook group saw the posts, notified the Gibbses and sent them a photo Carper had taken of Tennessee.

“I said, ‘Oh, that looks so much like him!’” Barbara Gibbs said. “I was so excited.”

She called Carper and about 15 hours after Tennessee had gone missing he was reunited with his family.

“I thought he was in a pretty good state of mind and he seemed happy after we cleaned him up,” Carper said. “But he was 10 times happier when his family showed up.”

Follow Mike Organ on Twitter: @MikeOrganWriter