Doctor Down donates wrap for rescue dog

Berl Tiskus/Valley Journal
Peggy Baird, who works at Doctor Down, demonstrates how the rescue wrap can be opened from any side.

Berl Tiskus
Valley Journal
POLSON — A dog named Taz brought rescuers to his mistress. A world-class endurance runner fell and injured herself and had to rely on her dog for help. A search and rescue volunteer followed Taz to find the injured young woman and wrapped her in a Doctor Down Rescue Wrap. Sounds like a movie, right?
The story will be filmed for a series called “I Shouldn’t be Alive” in Marble Canyon, Ariz., this August. And Doctor Down, a local company owned by Bob Ricketts, will donate a Doctor Down Rescue Wrap to the production company for filming.
With a fluid and windproof shell and natural or synthetic down cores, the 12-pound Doctor Down Rescue Wrap with handles is an all weather emergency wrap designed to envelope a patient for medical transport. Hot or cold packs can be placed in pockets on the wrap to warm or cool a patient. The patient in this story was named Danelle Ballengee.
After Taz and Ballengee’s ordeal is filmed, the wrap will go to the Grand County EMS, which located Ballengee with Taz’s help in real life.

Peggy Baird, manager at Doctor Down, said the movie production company contacted Doctor Down around July 20 to see if they could borrow or lease one of the bright-orange emergency rescue wraps.
Ricketts, a dog lover, decided to donate a wrap. Baird said they printed the Grand County logo on the wrap as well as the company name before they mailed the wrap off to Arizona. Baird had a soft spot for dogs, too, since a canine friend saved a friend’s child from begin kidnapped. Baird told Taz’s story as she remembered it from an article in “Runner’s World.”
Taz, a big rust-colored mutt, went running with his owner Ballengee on Dec. 13, 2006. Ballengee was one of the world’s best endurance runners, and she and Taz were out to run and hike an eight-mile loop near Moab, Utah, where she often ran. Ballengee slipped and fell nearly 60 feet on the red rocks. Then Ballengee crawled to the canyon floor and spent the next three days and two nights there.
Dorothy Rossignol, a neighbor of Ballengee’s, noticed the absence of the young woman and her dog and notified the police.
Taz must have known Ballengee was injured because he stayed with Ballengee the first night and then started looking for people to help. Taz would check in with Ballengee and then go look for people near Ballengee’s pickup.
Eventually Bego Gerhardt with the Grand County Search and Rescue found Ballengee after Taz led the searcher to his owner.
Gerhardt wrapped Ballengee, who was hypothermic and frostbitten, in a Doctor Down Rescue Wrap to await transport to the hospital.
Ballengee broke her pelvis in four places, cracked three vertebrae and lost one third of her blood. She was in surgery in a Denver hospital for six hours and has since recovered.
Now the Grand County EMS will have another Doctor Down just in case they need to save someone else’s life.