New calendar highlights Chattanooga Firefighter pets

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – The Chattanooga Fire Department has created a fundraising calendar to help purchase oxygen masks made specifically for certain sizes and types of animals.

Pets are members of the household for many families, and dogs and cats are sometimes victims of house fires.

Many are saved by firefighters with make-shift equipment, but if a new campaign is successful, each truck will have pet resuscitation devices.

A local photographer, a spay/neuter clinic, and dozens of Chattanooga Firefighters and their pets have teamed up to create a way to help save more pets lives when they’re overcome with smoke from a house fire.

Eileen Price with Wally’s Friends Clinic came up with the idea for a fundraising calendar to help purchase oxygen masks made specifically for certain sizes and types of animals.

“I was having lunch with Miki Boni one day, a wonderful artist and photographer for the calendar, and she said I’ve got a great idea, so we teamed up, and she did all of the photography.”

Chief Phil Hyman says “we’ve used it on pet’s before. We just used our standard stuff that we use on humans as well. So this is actually a benefit–it makes it a little more efficient to do, resuscitation on pets with the equipment that they gave us.”

Photographer Miki Boni delivered the calendars to Chattanooga Fire Chief Phil Hyman.

Eileen Price says “We had immediate success because many of the firefighters have their own animals and oftentimes multiple animals,and as you can see if you purchase a calendar, so they were all ready to become models for the calendar.”

All of the firefighters in the department had already been trained on the proper use of the equipment.

Chief Hyman adds “A veterinarian came in and trained all of our firefighters on all the equipment, showed them the very specifics of it and was fortunate enough to partner with the folks making the calendar to, to get equipment on all of our trucks to help with those.”

The calendars are now on sale for $20. The goal of the campaign is $5,000.