HAS K-9 LIVES: Tracy Aron yesterday with her dog, Kai, who leaped before he looked and plunged four stories. (Robert Miller)
QUITE A TALE: Kai, in the arms of his owner, Tracy Aron, landed on this ledge. (
)
He’s no Underdog.
Kai, a 2-year-old Shiba Inu puppy, thought he could fly, but it turns out he can only fetch.
Yet he miraculously survived a four-story fall from the roof garden of an Upper West Side townhouse after hurling himself over an unguarded ledge.
“It’s a miracle,” owner Tracy Aron, a Broadway theater producer who lives on West End Avenue, told The Post yesterday. “A week after falling 50 feet, he’s able to walk up and down the stairs.”
Kai took flight Dec. 3 after Aron led him up to the roof for his morning constitutional. A lattice fence surrounding the garden had been removed because of a renovation, and Kai playfully jumped from roof to roof, bounding over the knee-high ledge.
“I said, ‘Kai, come back!’ ” recalled Aron. “He was looking right at me and my girlfriend and just launched himself from the back of the building thinking there was another roof. We watched him fall and then heard a thud and his crying.”
Traumatized and panicked, Aron knocked hysterically on her neighbors’ doors crying for help.
Aron’s friend dialed 911, where an operator told her any animal-related issues had to be dealt with by 311. An operator with 311 told her to call 911. On the third try, she told 911 to come help the three adults who were now sitting on the dangerous ledge and needed help. “I thought, ‘He’s dying on the ledge and no one will help and we’re wasting time,” said Aron. “I’ve never felt so guilty about anything in my life.”
The police helped transport the injured pooch to BluePearl Veterinarians, where a vet placed the pup in the intensive-care unit for three nights.
But a week later, Kai was home and healthy — although he can’t see out of his right eye and is on steroids to reduce swelling. Amazingly, he broke no bones.
Aron had recently returned to the city from a four-month stay in Northern California. Her friend Javier had cared for her pet, and she was shocked to see Kai had put on 10 pounds while she was away. “My friend is a little chubby,” she said. “I said, ‘You just want him to look like you.’ ”
Now she admits the extra layer of fat might have been what saved Kai’s life.