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Lola, a long-haired dachschund who had been missing since a fire gutted her owner’s house a month ago, has turned up alive and, for the most part, well.

Terisa Acevedo initially thought that Lola had somehow escaped the blaze and was wandering her neighborhood in Hyde Park. She posted fliers and walked the neighborhood, but, as weeks passed, her hope dwindled.

On Monday, nearly 30 days after the fire, Acevedo, a 24-year-old EMT and Northeastern University student, returned to the house and heard a scratching noise at the front door.

She yelled out her pet’s name and, as neighbors joined in, ripped off the plywood that had been placed over the home’s entrance.

“It was a miracle,” Acevedo told the Boston Globe, hugging her dog at the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital, where Lola is being treated.

(Photo: By Brian Adams / MSPCA-Angell)

Molly Pfeiffer was walking with her unleashed Wheaten terrier near New York’s Pier 54 Tuesday when the dog, named Boogie, ran after a gull and jumped into the Hudson River.

Molly, 29, followed, snagging her dog, hoisting her up on a plank beneath the pier and calling for help as she hung on to a pylon.

“I saw her go down into the water and I went after her,” Pfeiffer told the New York Daily News. “The current was pretty strong. She was going to drown … I grabbed Boogie and pulled her up on to one of the wooden supports on the pier. It was covered with algae and really slippery.”

A passerby heard Pfeiffer’s cries and dialed 911, and officers on a police department boat plucked Pfeiffer and Boogie from the water.

Pfeiffer thanked the stranger who called for help: “He saved my life and Boogie’s.” She said she’d do the same thing again: “I love [Boogie] very much or I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

Most Daily News readers feel the same way. In an online poll, the newspaper asked readers if they would jump into a river to save their pet.

Eighty percent answered “in a heartbeat.”

(Photos: From the New York Daily News)

Patrick the pit bull — a dog who was starved, placed in a garbage bag and tossed down the trash chute of a 22-floor apartment building in Newark — continues to slowly recover.

And considering the condition he was found in — by a maintenance worker who noticed a soon-to be-compacted plastic bag moving — that’s pretty close to miraculous.

According to Associated Humane Societies, Patrick, as he was later named, was living — and just barely — somewhere in the Garden Spires apartment building, which is equipped with garbage chutes on each floor.

“Someone had no more use for this dog. They had starved it to near death, put it in a garbage bag and threw it down the garbage chute,” AHS reports on its website.

Normally, the contents of the bin at the bottom of the building are sent directly into a trash compacter, but on Wednesday, March 16th, a maintenance worker noticed a bag moving, opened it and found the dog inside – about one year old, pathetically thin and on death’s doorstep.

“His eyelids were moving a little. But he was just lifeless — his body hung there when we picked him up,” Monmouth County animal control officer Arthur Skinner said.

Skinner took the dog to Associated Humane Societies Newark Animal Care Center, and he was sent from there Garden State Veterinary Specialists in Tinton Falls,  veterinarians and technicians have been giving him transfusions of blood, feeding him intravenously and warming him with heated blankets.

By Monday, Patrick, who was named by hospital staff on St. Patrick’s Day, was able to sit up and walk. He’s now off IV fluids and eating canned dog food.

Patrick — and we’ll warn you now that the picture below, taken shortly after he was discovered, is highly disturbing — is slowly becoming more than skin and bones. He spends most of his time in his cage, napping next to stuffed animals donated by the hospital’s staff. He doesn’t bark or wag his tail, but lifts his head whenever someone passes by, accordingn to the Star-Ledger in Newark.

Officials from the Monmouth County Humane Society have offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the dog’s abuser.

The Associated Humane Societies reported this week that Patrick is now able to stand, eats little bits of food several times a day and is having normal bowel movements. The organization is accepting donations towards his continued care. You can find AHS updates on Patrick here.