The week's good news: August 3, 2017

(Image credit: Steve Vidler / Alamy Stock Photo)

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1. UPS driver adopts dog she befriended along route
2. Doctor delivers baby right before giving birth herself
3. 20 students serve as their teacher's flower girls and ring bearers
4. 92-year-old sets records during her first-ever swim meet
5. Museum changes dinosaur display after 10-year-old spots error

published 3 August 2017

1. UPS driver adopts dog she befriended along route

As a UPS driver, Katie Newhouser gets to know people and their animals on her route, and she quickly bonded with Leo the pit bull, meeting him through his owner, Tina Rummel. "I had started talking to Tina because I saw her walking Leo one day," Newhouser told Today. "And Leo took a liking to me. He would even hop in my truck and look around the back." When she found out last fall that Rummel had died, Newhouser offered to watch Leo until Rummel's son, Canon, finished training with the Marines. Leo ended up getting along so well with Newhouser's dogs that Canon agreed to let him stay with her forever. "I just wanted to help a family out when they were going through a rough time," Newhouser said. "But as soon as Leo came in my house, the whole vibe changed."

Even though she was due to have her own child any minute, when Dr. Amanda Hess heard that the baby of one of her patients was in distress, she threw on another hospital gown and got to work. The OB/GYN had just been induced at Kentucky's Frankfort Regional Medical Center in late July when she rushed to Leah Halliday Johnson's hospital room. The baby needed immediate attention, and not long after it was born and receiving care, Hess' own contractions began in earnest. Halliday Johnson told NBC News she appreciated what Hess did, adding, "It makes you feel better, bringing a baby girl into the world, knowing there are women like her willing to step up like that."

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Here comes the bride — and her 20 flower girls and ring bearers, all students in her kindergarten-first grade combo class. Marielle Slagel Keller shared all of her wedding planning details with her students from IPS Butler Lab School in Indianapolis ahead of the big day, and she realized there was no way she could walk down the aisle without them there. For her June 24 wedding, the children all wore white and carried a garland together, walking into the chapel ahead of their teacher. After the ceremony, the students couldn't stop hugging their teacher. "To have those kids walk down the aisle for me was really special," Slagel Keller said. "There were a lot of tears."

She waited 92 years to compete in her first swim meet, and Stasia Kowalski blew her competitors out of the water. On Saturday, Kowalski swam in three races at the 41st Annual Lakeside Masters Long Course Invitational in Louisville, Kentucky, and broke the records for the 100-meter backstroke in the 90-94 age bracket and the 50-meter backstroke, both set more than 10 years ago. Kowalski said she didn't learn how to swim until she turned 40, because growing up, she was terrified of the water. In the summer, she swims two to three times a week, 15 laps every time. "Just because you're in your 90s doesn't mean life is over," Kowalski told The Courier-Journal. "There's always something exciting to do, if you want to."

A young dinosaur enthusiast has outsmarted the staff at London's Natural History Museum. Charlie Edwards, 10, who has Asperger's syndrome, was enjoying the museum's "Dino Snores" sleepover event when he noticed a wall sign that wrongly identified a four-legged protoceratops as an oviraptor, a birdlike dinosaur that walked on its hind legs. Charlie let a staff member know, and the museum later contacted him to say thanks, promising to fix the error. "When he likes a subject, he will try to find out everything about it," Charlie's mother told Metro.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.