Dog blown five stories off balcony survives fall

“I call him my miracle dog,” Sarann Lindenauer said as she held her 4-year-old terrier Alfie, careful not to put pressure on his bruised chest and bandaged leg. “I’m just so thrilled he’s okay.”

A miracle indeed. Just a few bruises, a sore paw and a cut lip were all that Alfie suffered recently when a heavy wind apparently blew the dog off of Lindenauer’s 11th floor terrace in Tribeca's Independence Plaza and onto the roof of a townhouse in the complex, five stories below and some 30 feet to the east.



Lindenauer said Alfie usually avoids the terrace and only goes onto it briefly when it’s thundering or otherwise noisy outside. “Then he’ll bark and run back in," she said. "I’m thinking that wind just took him because he doesn’t jump.” Had the wind not whipped Alfie towards the townhouse, he would have landed on the concrete plaza, three stories farther down.

A vet determined that Alfie had no broken bones. Bruises on a leg and underside indicated that he probably landed on his stomach. “At the vet, they called him Alfie the Aviator,” Lindenauer laughed. Alfie has recovered, his owner said, though he may still be traumatized by his harrowing flight. A few days after the incident the wind blew hard again and Alfie became frightened. “I couldn’t stop him from shaking,” Lindenauer said. “I closed the window so he couldn’t hear the wind and then he calmed down.”