43
Family fears someone stole seeing-eye dog
Photo
Sam Vona of Struthers, who is blind, and his mother, Jo Ann, hold one of the posters sheÕs put up, seeking help and offering a reward to find Gannon, SamÕs seeing-eye dog, who ran off on Saturday..
Photo
Gannon,above, is an 8-year-old German shepherd, missing in Struthers. Owner Sam Vona and his family fear that Gannon, who has a collar with identification tags, has been stolen. .
By JEANNE STARMACK
STRUTHERS
Gannon, an 8- year-old German shepherd, was playing ball with his owner, Sammy Vona, in their yard at 414 Creed St. Saturday evening.
Suddenly Gannon took off, maybe to chase a squirrel. Vona, who has only 2 percent of his vision, isn’t really sure why.
So he set out after his dog, who is also his seeing-eye guide, to try to get him back.
“He took off toward Eighth Street, and by the time I got there, he wasn’t there,” said Vona.
Vona, his family and friends and police searched everywhere they could think.
“We looked everywhere, tooth and nail,” Vona said Monday. “We had about 100 people looking, and there’s no sign of him.”
“I’ve been with the dog for eight years,” he continued. “He’s been my best friend.”
Vona and his family fear that Gannon, who has a collar with ID tags, has been stolen.
Police searched nearby woods and a park thoroughly, Vona said, and they found no trace of him.
“They’re still keeping their eye out until he’s found,” he said, adding that everyone knows what the dog means to him.
Vona, who was blinded after being shot in 2001, said Gannon is a blessing and a companion in his changed life.
“I was doing what I shouldn’t have been doing,” said Vona, who was 30 at the time. When the shooting happened, he was with a crowd of people in Youngstown. A fight broke out over a woman, he said. He was shot five times in the head and once in the chest.
That was six days before Christmas. The shooting that took his eyesight also kept him in a coma until February.
He got Gannon from The Seeing Eye in Morristown, N.J., said his mother, Jo Ann Vona, returning home Monday after putting up posters all over town. “Who would do this?” she said. “That’s my son’s eyes.”
In the years he’s had Gannon, he’s gotten used to the constant companionship, Vona said. “We travel a lot,” said Vona. “Back and forth to Florida,” he added.
“We go for walks,” he said. “We’re up every day at 5 a.m.”
Vona is looking ahead to attending the Business Enterprises Program at the Cleveland Sight Center, where they’ll teach him to run his own business, he said. But he will feel lost there without Gannon.
Gannon weighs about 80 pounds and has the classic German shepherd coloring, with a black snout and a widow’s peak.
“He looks just like Rin Tin Tin,” Vona said.
He is a friendly dog. Anyone who finds him can catch him and call them or the police, family members said.
He also needs medication.
They’re begging for the return of Gannon, family members said.
“I need him really bad,” Vona said.