March 13, 2009

Similar in looks as the Puggle shown above, Dutch was found alive yesterday just one mile away from the deadly Cape Cod animal hospital fire which struck earlier this week. (ZT Pet News Photo Illustration)

BARNSTABLE, Mass. -- A dog that has been missing since a fire at the Cape Cod Animal Hospital on Monday has been found in good health.

The Puggle, or Pug/Beagle-mix, named Dutch, was located at the Cape Cod Airfield in Barnstable, Mass., on Thursday morning, more than a mile away from the veterinary clinic.

The dog was in "good condition," albeit a little dirty, Claire Sullivan, front desk manager at the hospital told The Boston Globe.

Dutch's recovery offers a silver lining to the story of the hospital's destructive fire, which killed three cats and one dog on Monday night. Twelve other dogs -- all of which were visiting patients and owned by private owners -- were rescued when the fire initially broke out. They all survived.

Three cats and one dog, however, never made it out of the building.

The fire now has been linked to an electrical failure, though the cause was initially unknown. In an underground conduit leading from the street to the hospital, both the electric and gas lines ran side-by-side, officials from the State Fire Marshal's Office and the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills Fire Department announced Wednesday.

The failure caused the plastic gas pipes to melt, allowing gas to leak into the building where it was ignited by an unknown source -- possibly a furnace or other appliance. Massachusetts is now investigating whether the gas and electric lines were appropriately separated, State Fire Marshal spokeswoman Jennifer Mieth told The Cape Cod Times.

When neighbor Kevin Lacasse heard the explosion on Monday night, he ran to the scene to assist in any way possible.

Outside the hospital, he met head veterinarian Scott Munson, DVM, and together they broke down the back door, using a piece of wood and cinder-block. They then ran through the smoke filled corridors and opened the animals' kennels, ushering them to safety.

"It was pretty freaky. We could hear cracks and explosions," Lacasse reportedly said. "But the dogs were really quiet, really good. They didn't know what to do, and some of them wanted to run toward the fire We grabbed the small ones and flushed the bigger dogs out."

It was the second highly publicized fire of the week to take the lives of animals; on Saturday, a propane explosion at an eastern Pennsylvania kennel, Pazzazz Pet Boarding, killed 17 dogs, as Zootoo Pet News originally reported.

Among the canine victims was Martha Stewart's Chow puppy, Genghis Khan.

Stewart blogged about the fire on her Twitter page, saying, "chow breeder karen tracy lost eleven chows and five boarders in a tragic propane explosion -- my little genghis khan perished in the blaze [sic]."

The Associated Press, The Boston Globe and The Cape Cod Times contributed to this article.