One day the Englishman became ill, and shortly thereafter, he died. Townspeople tried to adopt Pedro, but the dog would never leave the beach for fear he would miss his master’s return. He waited on the beach through hot sun and driving rain. People tried to feed him, but eventually they gave up. He wouldn’t accept food from anyone other than his master. Finally, to feed himself, Pedro went back to fishing.
It happened that on this same island there were a number of stray cats. Ravenous, they would gather to watch Pedro dive into the schools of fish, select the fish he wanted and bring it back to eat on the shore. Then the cats would fight over what the dog had left uneaten. The dog must have observed this, for one morning when Pedro had eaten his fill, he dove into the water again and came back up with a large fish, which he placed on the sand before the group of cats. Then he backed off and watched. One black cat, with greater courage than the others, approached the fish, grabbed it and ran. After that, in addition to keeping vigil for his master, the dog also seemed to consider it his duty to feed those less fortunate. For every morning thereafter, Pedro the fisherman shared his catch with the hungry cats of Mallorca.
Bob Toren
Angel’s Angel
When we first met Frisbee, she wasn’t much to look at—a black-and-white lump of fur, being half-dragged and half-pushed by an impatient veterinary technician. Someone had left two six-week-old puppies in a box behind the hardware store outside of town. It was April in Texas, so the pups were lonely and hungry, but luckily not frozen. We agreed to foster them.
Over the next month, while the puppies grew, our family volunteered at the local shelter’s Saturday adoption days and held the leashes of older dogs waiting for permanent homes. For three weeks in a row,my husband held an affectionate, gray and white one-year-old Weimaraner/cattle dog mix named Angel. A volunteer had found Angel lying at the side of the road. No one knew whether she had been hit by or thrown from a car, but in addition to her injuries, she also had heartworms and spent months at the veterinarian’s office undergoing treatment.
Sometimes when a dog is adopted, the chemistry with the adoptive family isn’t right, and the dog is returned to the shelter. We were surprised to learn that Angel had been returned three times for “erratic behavior,” and was considered a “hard to place” dog. We held a family meeting and decided to bring Angel home. The next weekend, a family adopted one of our puppies, leaving just one: the girl we had named Frisbee. She and Angel got along well. In fact, we wondered about the other homes Angel had been in because she didn’t act erratically with people or other dogs. Her only fault was that she tried to keep close to us, so we were constantly tripping over her. Her head appeared between the rungs of my chair. She leaned against my legs while I worked at the sink.
One evening, about a week after we adopted Angel, our family sat down to dinner. Angel and Frisbee lay under the table. Suddenly, there was a thump, followed by scraping as the empty chair next to me mysteriously pushed back. We heard more thrashing and saw Frisbee scramble out from under the table. I assumed the dogs were squabbling and bent down to scold them.
I had never seen a seizure before. Angel’s eyes were dull and her head cartwheeled against the floor. Her legs twitched and thrashed as if she were racing from unseen demons. Our kids cleared the chairs, I cushioned Angel’s head against the tile floor, and my husband dialed the vet. We hoped the episode would be a one-time event. Maybe she’d eaten something someone had thrown over the fence. Maybe she’d eaten a poisonous plant. (Sometimes she chewed on trees like a beaver!) But that evening’s vet visit was the first of many.
Angel’s seizures came more frequently. We tried a range of medications, read, contacted canine acupuncturists and visited specialists in Houston where Angel had a spinal tap. Angel was diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy, a cruel diagnosis meaning that she suffered seizures for which there was no identifiable source. We could treat her symptoms, but not the cause. The veterinarians said that Angel’s seizures were unusually severe, and she might live another year or two at most. At that point, we decided to adopt Frisbee. We reasoned that we would be able to bear Angel’s loss better if we already had another dog.
Although medication eased Angel’s seizures, several times a day she stiffened and stared into space in a petit mal seizure. Then she shook her head, as if to put her brains back in order, and continued as if nothing had happened. The grand mal seizures weren’t as easy to watch. These episodes came unexpectedly, with brutal ferocity. If left alone, Angel sometimes hit her head on the floor until her jaw bled. We tried to rearrange our lives to be home more, but even so, we returned to disaster several times each week.
During the week of Thanksgiving, Angel had multiple grand mal seizures. I had to cut back her favorite activity and stay closer to home after a seizure midwalk left me struggling to carry her sixty-five-pound deadweight. Our family was heartbroken.
By then, our “puppy” Frisbee was a muscular seven-month-old, fifty-pound dog. She had grown up watching Angel’s struggles, hearing “go sit” and “stay back” while I held Angel’s head. One evening I heard Frisbee bark. It didn’t sound like a “stranger at the door,” or “squirrel in the yard” warning. I followed the bark and found Frisbee pinning Angel to the floor.
Some dogs have the innate ability to detect the onset of seizures. People use these dogs to detect their seizures so they can get to a safe location before a seizure starts. Other dogs, though not able to detect a seizure before it happens, stand over their charge during a seizure until the person regains consciousness. They hold their person steady and keep them safe. This is what Frisbee was doing for Angel, though she had never been trained to do so.
Frisbee has continued to assist Angel during her seizures. I don’t know what Frisbee “tells” Angel when she holds her down. All I know is that if a seizure begins when my husband or I aren’t in the room, Frisbee leaps into action. Apparently she watched us hold Angel and decided she could help. We used to worry every time we left the house, not knowing if a seizure was imminent. Now Frisbee fills in.
Frisbee is also Angel’s “spare paws.” Our dogs don’t bark to go out or come back in. Instead they “tap” on the door. Angel loves her walk and does fine as long as all four paws are on the ground. However, her medications make her unsteady and she has trouble balancing on the back steps to tap on the door. If both dogs are outside, Frisbee taps on the door and then moves behind Angel, letting her go in first. If Frisbee is inside and sees Angel waiting outside, she taps as if she has to go out and then lies down when someone lets Angel in.
Frisbee isn’t perfect. She hates to have her feet wiped. She growls at dogs she doesn’t know. She pulls on her leash when we go for a walk. But that’s okay. Thanks to Frisbee, five years after her grim diagnosis, Angel is still a tail-wagging, snack-snitching, treasured family member. What Frisbee can’t do doesn’t matter. For what she does, she’s Angel’s angel.
Wendy Greenley
Take Me Home!
As I gave Perrier, my black Labrador guide dog, the command, “Forward, inside,” I could feel my heart thumping. Would he obey me and go up the three steps into the waiting train? Moments before, the commuter train had pulled into the station on its way from Philadelphia to Newark, New Jersey. As the brakes hissed and the train came to a halt near us, Perrier sat calmly beside me on the platform. But would he actually guide me on? Not to worry! Perrier conducted himself like a seasoned professional and smartly led me to the stairs and into the club car.
Four days earlier, we had returned home from the Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey, after spending three and a half weeks learning to work as a team. At that time I was living with my wife, Phyllis, and daughter, Lori, in a suburb north of Philadelphia. Perrier quickly adapted to life in our apartment, and during the next few days we took frequent short walks around the neighborhood— a new experience without my long white cane. We visited some of the nearby stores and Perrier quickly learned to pause at an ice-cream pa
rlor and see if this was one of those days when we would indulge my creamy passion. Now it was time to return to my job in New York, which would provide a true test of Perrier’s skill.
My favorite conductor, Bobby, was on duty that morning and greeted the two of us with enthusiasm. Like a good old-time railroad conductor, he knew all the regular commuters by name. As I positioned Perrier under one of the tables in the club car, Jim, the waiter, came over to check on whether I wanted my usual coffee and muffin. This initial commute began a routine that lasted for five years, until I moved to New York to live. My commute normally lasted about an hour because it was a typical “local” with many stops along the way. On this first trip, however, several surprises were in store for me. When the train pulled into the first stop, Perrier got up and began pulling me to the exit. Since I knew we had more than an hour to go, I firmly resisted his attempt to disembark and resettled him under my seat. At each of the next few stops the scene was repeated. It finally dawned on me that during our training, all the teams got on a commuter train, went one stop, got off, crossed the platform, got on another train and went back one stop to Morristown. For Perrier, commuting to work meant going one stop and one stop only!
Another surprise was the attention lavished on us by my fellow commuters, many of whom I had been traveling with for several years without exchanging a word. Dog talk abounded, with questions about Perrier and reminiscences about the dogs in their own lives.
Once I reached the Newark station, I had two options: I could catch an Amtrak train fromNewark intoManhattan, a fifteen-minute ride, or transfer to the Port Authority subway system. The advantage of the subway was I would be within easy walking distance of my office at Baruch College when I got off, but it took forty-five minutes. On this first day, as I left the commuter train in Newark, an Amtrak train was just pulling into the station across the platform. I decided to take it. With my “Forward” command, Perrier swiftly crossed, made his way through the crowd waiting to board and guaranteed we would be the first ones to enter the waiting train. During this transfer I realized my new partner was a dog ideally suited for working in New York City.
On arrival in Manhattan, I opted to walk to work, a distance of slightly more than a mile. After walking several blocks south on Eighth Avenue, Perrier veered to the right, and the next thing I knew, he attempted to board a northbound bus! He was giving me a clear signal, which was repeated many times during our eight years of partnership: I’d rather ride than walk! Unfortunately for Perrier, the bus was going in the wrong direction.
Arriving at my office twenty minutes later, I was exhilarated. This thrilling sense of emerging independence was reinforced every time Perrier stopped at a curb, avoided rushing pedestrians and smartly crossed a traffic-filled street. What had been a chore for the last few years was now an exciting adventure!
During our years of intercity travel, Perrier and I shared many unique experiences. Stopping at stairs, avoiding open cellar doors, handling the hustle and bustle of city life, and weaving in and out of cars intruding into pedestrian walkways were all in a day’s work for my magnificent canine partner. The one constant was that life was full of challenges.
One memorable occasion remains forever etched in my memory. On this particular day Perrier’s intuitive guiding skill went well beyond his routine duties. I left the office just as a major blizzard hit the Northeast, and by the time I arrived at the station near my home, more than ten inches of snow had fallen. Stepping off the train, a strange new world encompassed me. Snow is to a blind person what fog is to a sighted person. Accustomed to being met by Phyllis, I listened for the sound of her voice or the car motor. As the train departed, I realized I was alone, since I had been the only passenger to disembark. The suddenness and severity of the storm not only kept Phyllis from picking me up at the station, but also kept all other cars off the usually crowded road. I knew Phyllis was probably stuck at home and frantic, but the road was impassable, even by emergency vehicles. The tiny station was closed, offering no protection from the snow.
With a sinking feeling, I realized that Perrier and I were on our own. Descending the steps of the station platform, it was eerie not to hear a single car moving. Snow, like dense fog, deadens the sounds I rely on for cues about the environment. That suppression of sound combined with the lack of traffic was totally disorienting for me. It was not only eerie, it was downright scary. I realized that I could easily become lost and wander around for hours looking for help. I knew I had to turn right after exiting the station, but had no idea where the sidewalks and curbs were. All I could do was give Perrier the “Forward” command and hope he knew where he was going. I said, “Take me home, Perrier!”
The snow continued falling as I followed my guide’s slow but steady lead. As we walked along, the only sound I heard was the crunching of my shoes as we plodded on. I kept hoping a car would go by so I could determine if we were even on the sidewalk! No such luck. In the immense silence of the falling snow, it felt as if Perrier and I were the last two beings on Earth.
After walking for what seemed an interminable period, Perrier made a sharp right turn. At that point I said to him, “I sure hope you know where you are going.” About ten minutes later he made another short right turn and I followed him up two steps where he unhesitatingly placed his nose on the doorknob of my apartment! Flinging open the door, I was enveloped by the safety and warmth of my home. The tension ebbed from my body and was immediately replaced by an incredible surge of gratitude for the skill and confidence of my canine partner. Dropping to my knees, I buried my face in Perrier’s wet fur and whispered to him, “Thank you, buddy, for rescuing me!” His response was a warm tongue on my cheek.
Ed Eames, Ph.D.
More Chicken Soup?
Many of the stories and poems you have read in this book were submitted by readers like you who had read earlier Chicken Soup for the Soul books. We publish at least five or six Chicken Soup for the Soul books every year. We invite you to contribute a story to one of these future volumes.
Stories may be up to twelve hundred words and must uplift or inspire. You may submit an original piece, something you have read or your favorite quotation on your refrigerator door.
To obtain a copy of our submission guidelines and a listing of upcoming Chicken Soup books, please write, fax or check our Web site.
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Supporting Others
Join Us in Supporting
Pets to Stay in Their Homes “For Life”
The stories in this book celebrate the loving relationships between people and their animal companions. Yet in spite of all this love, an estimated 4 to 6 million animals are brought to shelters throughout the United States every year! Contrary to popular belief, most animals in sheltersweren’t abused, nor did they do anything “wrong” that caused them to lose their homes. Most animals are abandoned for “people reasons” like allergies, divorce and moving, or because of behaviors that pet owners don’t understand and don’t know how to address. If these reasons, which break the bond between pets and their families, could be eliminated, just imagine how many animals could remain in their homes.
That’s the premise behind the Pets for Life program of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Through Pets for Life, the HSUS provides information on the most common behavior problems and how to solve them, about dealing with allergies, tips on finding pet-friendly rental housing, and other issues affecting pets and their people. The HSUS also provides information on choosing the right pet,whether froma shelter or a reputable breed
er. For information, go to www.PetsForLife.org or write to the address below.
Of course, pet overpopulation is still a factor that contributes to the large number of animals that end up in shelters. The HSUS continues to work to reduce pet overpopulation through education and programs like the Rural Area Veterinary Services (RAVS).
The Humane Society of the United States is the nation’s largest animal protection organization with more than 8.5 million members and constituents. This nonprofit organization is amainstreamvoice for animals, with active programs in companion animal and equine protection, disaster preparedness and response, wildlife and habitat protection, research and farm animal advocacy and the development of sustainable agriculture. The HSUS protects all animals through legislation, litigation, investigation, education, advocacy and fieldwork. The group is based in Washington, D.C., and has numerous field representatives across the country.
The HSUS depends on donations for its lifesaving work. To donate, go to www.hsus.org, or send your contribution to: The HSUS, 2100 L Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037. The HSUS can be reached at 202-452-1100.
Who Is Jack Canfield?
Jack Canfield is one of America’s leading experts in the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. He is both a dynamic, entertaining speaker and a highly sought-after trainer. Jack has a wonderful ability to inform and inspire audiences toward increased levels of self-esteem and peak performance. Jack most recently released a book for success titled The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.
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