A retired police dog that spent her career tracking down baddies has been praised for saving her handler's life. Copper Michael Greaves, 50, couldn't face never seeing Jooba the Belgian Malinois again after she was retired from South Yorkshire Police in 2022, so decided to take her in as a family pet.
At first Jooba, now nine, struggled to transition to life off the beat, finding it hard to adapt to civilian life. “Especially when I’d come downstairs to go to work dressed in black, she’d think, ‘Dad’s dressed in black, that means we’re off to work’,” says Michael from his home in Barnsley. “She found it difficult to adapt at first, but over time she’s accepted that she’s retired. She gets on fantastically with my partner, Nicky.”.
But clever Jooba showed her instincts were just as sharp as ever in October last year when Michael started experiencing pain. “On October 6 I woke up and went to the gym at 6.30am, came home and took Jooba out for a walk. I noticed some chest pain but thought nothing of it, so off I went to work,” he recalls.
“Came home, had some tea and went to bed. At 1am I woke up with that pain again, it was like a four-inch line down my chest that hurt.”. Having worked on the firearms squad for 15 years, Michael had the highest possible first-aid training and knew of all the normal signs and symptoms of a heart attack. “But I had none of those - it felt like indigestion. I had no sweating, no pain in my arm. So I took four Rennies and went downstairs so as to not disturb Nicky.”.
