Then Lim was diagnosed with the neurological disease myalgic encephalomyelitis, which can cause muscle pain, weakness, and loss of balance. “It was like I was sick with the flu all the time,” says Lim, who lives in Ottumwa, Iowa. “I started not to have the ability to go out, and as I began to do less, I could see that DeeDee really needed a job.” And so Lim began teaching DeeDee to be a service dog—her service dog—who would be able to accompany her freely into public areas to help Lim.
DeeDee with her owner, Brooke Lim, in their backyard (illustration credit 3.2)
Lim started by training DeeDee to retrieve, something greyhounds (unlike dogs like golden or Labrador retrievers) don’t generally do spontaneously. “I made it fun for her by putting peanut butter in an empty container. You work with what the dog has. The finished product of a service dog can look so fancy, but it’s about common sense.” Soon, Lim had trained DeeDee to pick things up that she dropped, to help with the laundry, to pull her out of bed, and then to pull the covers up over the bed to make it.
GREAT GREYHOUNDS
Greyhounds are among the fastest dogs, reaching speeds of 43 miles an hour.
On October 7, 2006, a greyhound named Cinderella May a Holly Grey set a new world record for the canine high jump: 68 inches.
Greyhounds have the highest red blood cell count of any dog. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body, so greyhounds’ high count most likely contributes to their speed.
Lim soon discovered that DeeDee would naturally alert her if she began to lose her balance. “The amazing thing is that she has trained herself to know when I’m about to have a total loss of balance, even when I don’t even sense it,” says Lim. “She will cross in front of me and put her head down and look away from me, so I know. And when I fall, I can put my arms around her and she will brace me.”
Canine expert and teacher Philip Levine says that because greyhounds have been bred in part for their sight, they are extremely sensitive to visual cues, making it possible for DeeDee to be aware of Lim’s smallest motions. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she was attuned to any irregularities of head movement, eye movement, and fluidity of movement,” he explains of DeeDee’s ability to sense an oncoming collapse in her owner. “In addition, greyhounds are extremely sensitive animals, more so than most.”
Their teamwork, says Lim, suits them both. “DeeDee has a purpose,” she says, “And I no longer feel complete without her. I literally put my life in her paws, and she comes through for me again and again.”
RETIRED GREYHOUND RACERS Greyhounds bred for racing are usually removed from the racing circuit if they do not win or place in a few consecutive races. In the past, losing dogs were often put to sleep. Today many greyhound rescue organizations promote the adoption of racing greyhounds. Up to 20,000 greyhounds are adopted yearly.
Schoep and his owner, John Unger, enjoy a moment in Lake Superior. (illustration credit 4.1)
Schoep
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT MEANS TO HEEL MIXED BREED WISCONSIN
John Unger and his then fiancée spent 18 months canvassing Wisconsin shelters, looking for the perfect dog. When they saw a German shepherd mix cowering in the corner of his kennel with his back to the door, they recognized him as the pet of their dreams. “We wanted to work with an abused dog,” Unger explains, “And to bring out his full potential. To help a dog who was completely unsocialized learn how to be a dog, free and easy and without fear.”
They certainly had their work cut out for them. Schoep, named for the famous Wisconsin ice cream, had grown up in the wild, being fed by a friendly stranger until he was brought into the shelter. He appeared never to have seen a leash or a ball, and he was terrified of men. “The first night he didn’t sleep at all so I stayed awake with him, lying down on the floor in front of him without approaching him, so he could begin to process that I was there and wasn’t going to hurt him,” says Unger. For the first few months, “I always made sure to walk in front of him, so he could keep me in his sight line. And I would massage him or lightly touch him.” Soon, Schoep was responding with kisses. “He started to sit on my foot with his back to me,” remembers Unger, “wanting his back rubbed. I had earned his trust.”
FAMOUS GERMAN SHEPHERDS
Rin Tin Tin, the first dog movie star, appeared on the screen in 1922 and went on to make a total of 26 films.
Berry starred in the Harry Potter film series as Sirius Black’s “animagus” form, a black dog, who would watch over Harry from the shadows and protect him.
Rando, a canine actor, had a starring role in the 1989 comedy K-9 about a detective and his drug-sniffing and chaos-producing furry partner, Jerry Lee.
Two years later, in 1998, Unger and his fiancée had broken up (they shared custody of Schoep until she moved out of state), and Unger was feeling suicidal. One January night, he walked the dog down to the lake intending to drown himself. “I can’t understand why I would have brought him and put him in that position even now, but I’m so glad I did,” says Unger. “I was crying and about to do it and he looked up at me with a look I’ve never seen before or since, with a kind of furrow in his brow like a person would have if they were confused. And I immediately snapped out of that place of despair. I was only thinking of him then, and how I had almost left him alone. We spent the night walking the streets, and then went to bed. And when I woke up the next afternoon, I felt entirely different. He really did save me.”
From that moment on, Unger took Schoep to the lake purely for relaxation. “He doesn’t know how to swim, so I used to hold him in my arms, and one day, he just fell asleep, ” says Unger. “Now he falls asleep almost instantly.” Hard of hearing, with failing vision, and suffering from arthritis, the dog’s aching joints are soothed by the waters of Lake Superior, where they go now to “swim,” and his owner relishes the time spent cradling Schoep.
One such moment was captured by Unger’s friend the photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson; when she posted the photo to her Facebook account, the image became a viral sensation. “I think in today’s world we are faced with such heaviness, we are moving too fast, and people look at this photograph and say, ‘That’s the way the world should be, filled with compassion,love and hope,’ ” says Unger. “People are just longing for it. And that’s the way I feel about Schoep. We understand each other, we are compassionate towards each other, and we love each other. He is my world.”
Schoep and Unger visit the lake to relax and to ease Schoep’s arthritis. (illustration credit 4.2)
HOW CAN YOU TREAT YOUR DOG’S ARTHRITIS? One out of every five adult dogs suffers from arthritis. Beyond medication, special orthopedic dog beds and upholstered steps that help your dog climb up on the sofa (rather than jump) can ease your dog’s joint pain.
Doogie enjoys climbing the trees on Boy Scout Island along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. (illustration credit 5.1)
Doogie
A REPTILIAN WRESTLING MATCH WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER FLORIDA
People go to amazing lengths to show devotion to their dogs, whether by preparing home-cooked meals, giving up their favorite spot on the couch, or … wrestling a threatening alligator.
Gary Murphy, a 72-year-old from Palm City, Florida, has upped the ante for what it means to be a protective dog owner. One morning, as he was working on his boat docked in the river behind his backyard, Murphy saw his 11-year-old West Highland white terrier, Doogie, go into the water alongside the dock to cool his feet. And then he heard a yelp. “I looked down and a gator had him in his mouth and was taking him into the water. I jumped ten feet over the rail off the dock and landed on top of the gator so he would let the dog go, and then I grabbed his nose and tried to punch him on the soft spot. I’ve been watching too many Swamp People episodes.”
The gator reared up, throwing Murphy off and swimming away. Murphy spent the next ten hours cleaning the dog’s wounds and cradling him in a towel. It was only at midnight that Murphy began to shake with fear, and it had nothing to do with
the trauma of the fight with the alligator. “I just started shaking realizing I had almost lost him. We are together all the time. He sleeps with his head on my pillow at night. He’s my shadow and I’m his alpha dog.”
WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER
ORIGIN: Scotland
COLOR(S): White
HEIGHT: 10 to 11 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Spunky, devoted, friendly, alert, and courageous. Westies make great family pets.
Doogie, whom Murphy and his wife, Linda, had adopted from a shelter six years earlier, spent the next few days recuperating at the vet. He was released with some bruising, but the vet assured the Murphys he would be just fine. Three weeks later, however, the gator—which was more than 8 feet long and weighed 320 pounds—returned, lounging in the mangroves by the dock. Murphy called the wildlife agency; it sent a team to fetch the alligator, which they later proclaimed to be, says Murphy, “the most aggressive gator they had ever caught.”
Murphy and Doogie quickly returned to their happy routines; Murphy works on his boat while Doogie digs holes and hunts snakes. “He’s the smartest dog I’ve ever met,” says Murphy. “I wish my children were this smart.” He adds that he’s no more afraid of alligators than he ever was (“They were here long before I was—it takes a long time to get that ugly—and they don’t generally bother us”), and explains that because of the construction of a bridge up the river, the creatures’ natural habitat had been disturbed that particular month. Still, “I would do it all over again,” he says. “I’m nuts. And I don’t know what I would ever do if I lost my dog.”
WHY DO WESTIES HAVE WHITE COATS? When the breed was first being established in Scotland, the breed came in a variety of colors including black, red, cream, and white. Legend has it, while out on a hunt one day a red Westie was confused with a fox and mistakenly shot. From then on, the predominant Westie breeder encouraged white-coated dogs.
Hooch
A LEAP FOR LOVE MIXED BREED AUSTRALIA
From the first day that Sean Herbert, an Australian aviation company owner, adopted Hooch from a pound, the two were inseparable. So when the Cavalier King Charles spaniel–blue heeler cross came racing up the tarmac after him as Herbert was preparing to go skydiving, he took it in stride. “The person by the door of the plane grabbed the dog and said, ‘Is this yours?’ just as we were taking off,” he recalls. “The pilot wasn’t about to look after a puppy, so I duct-taped her to the inside of my suit, and we jumped. She seemed pretty happy.” Soon, thanks to a specially designed harness, Hooch was making weekly tandem jumps with her owner.
Hooch also insisted on riding on Herbert’s motorcycle and Jet Ski, and when he went scuba diving, she would jump overboard and attempt to dive down after him. Ever the thoughtful owner, Herbert went to work designing scuba gear for Hooch. At a lighting store, he found an item that became a frame for her mask. “The store owner wasn’t happy that I was trying light shades on my dog, but when I explained what I was trying to do, he was very helpful,” Herbert says. Engineers worked with him on attaching the mask to an oxygen case, and a wet-suit company agreed to custom-make her an outfit.
Hooch and her owner, Sean Herbert, parachute from 12,000 feet near Sydney, Australia. (illustration credit 6.1)
EXTREME DOGS
Tillman: This stocky bulldog holds a Guinness World Record as the fastest skateboarding dog, covering 100 meters in 19.678 seconds. Tillman also enjoys snowboarding, surfing, and skimboarding.
Part-Ex: A Jack Russell from the UK who has been taking part in extreme sports since he was 18 months old. Some of his favorites include kayaking, rock jumping, wind surfing, and coasteering.
Hooch made 14 scuba dives and 53 parachute jumps. (illustration credit 6.2)
Before long, the pair started training—first in a pool, then in the shallows, and eventually graduating to reef diving. “She would get to the bottom and walk away from me, exploring things around her,” Herbert remembers. “She was very interested in what was going on.”
Hooch, who made 14 dives before being forced to retire after she broke her leg falling out of bed, inherited a genetic fault from her Cavalier King Charles lineage that, explains Herbert, “[causes] their hearts to grow too big for their bodies.” She died from cardiac arrest at the age of 15, having seen more of the world than many of us could ever hope to.
GOING TO EXTREMES ON THE SILVER SCREEN We all know stuntpeople take the fall for their human counterparts, but what about the dogs? One of the most famous dogs of the silver screen, Rin Tin Tin, first appeared in silent films of the 1920s … doing his own stunts.
Hank, a Great Dane, helped protect his owner during a domestic violence attack. (illustration credit 7.1)
Hank
WOMEN’S BEST FRIEND GREAT DANE MISSOURI
When McKenzie, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, was brutally attacked by her boyfriend during an argument, her Great Dane, Hank, risked his well-being to protect her: Shielding McKenzie with his body the dog took the brunt of the assault, suffering two broken ribs and a fractured hip. Hours later, when McKenzie was offered a bed at the Rose Brooks Center, a domestic violence shelter, she returned the favor. On the telephone from the police station, with nowhere else to go, McKenzie told the person on the hotline, “I’m not coming without my dog.”
“The shelter said, ‘We don’t take dogs,’ ” McKenzie remembers. “And I said, ‘We aren’t separating.’ ” Concerned for her well-being, the shelter—with space for a hundred abused women and their children—agreed to put both up for the night. “We figured it was a one-day thing,” says the center’s spokesperson, Sarah North, “and we’d do whatever we had to in order to make it work.”
As a quick fix, the staff turned a bathroom into a kennel for Hank, having no idea that the shelter would be home for the next three months while the two healed. They ended up changing the course of the institution forever.
GREAT DANE
ORIGIN: Germany
COLOR(S): Brindle, fawn, blue, black, harlequin, and mantle
HEIGHT: 28 to 32 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Popular family pets, great Danes are courageous, friendly, and dependable.
“We had always known the benefits of having animals for the families,” says North. “Children are incredibly resilient about leaving their houses, their schools, their fathers. But the leaving of the pet can be the breaking point.” For many abused women, leaving the pet isn’t an option, and that means they stay in abusive situations. “One study said that 82 percent of women in shelters reported that their abuser had also either abused their animals or threatened to kill them,” says North. “Up to 40 percent of women say they [would] have left their abuser earlier if they could have brought their pets. But we were in the children-and-women business, not the dog business.”
When the media began to spread the story of McKenzie and Hank, donations started pouring in from across the world. Empowered by the experience with Hank—who, North says, had a therapeutic effect on staff members as well as on residents—shelter management made a plan. In June 2012, the Rose Brooks Center became the first shelter in the United States to have an on-site kennel—which houses as many as eight dogs and cats belonging to visiting families—and one of only a few to offer any kind of housing to families’ animals. “This was a dream of mine,” says McKenzie. “When I came into the shelter, I said, ‘I don’t want to be the last woman who brings her dog with her.’ ”
The benefits extend beyond enabling families to leave abusive situations and remain intact as a clan. According to North, the dog’s presence can supply the first step in healing a family in which the mother is emotionally shut down from trauma. “Pets can offer a bridge for rebuilding the family unit and reconnecting them,” she says. “It can be as simple as the fact that every night, the family can take the dog for a walk around the block together, and begin to talk.”
Hank and his owner, McKenzie, make an appearance at Cabaret, an event benefiting the Rose Brooks Center. (illustration cre
dit 7.2)
As for McKenzie and Hank, they are now living happily in their own apartment and getting on with their lives. “There was never a reason to protect me before, but he’s pretty protective now,” she says of her pet. With any perceived threat, “he will position himself so he’s crossed in front of me, between me and that person.” McKenzie now feels entirely secure in the world again, thanks to her dog. “I feel safe knowing he’s safe,” she says. “My goal now is to serve him. My goal is that he should not have to do anything for me, ever, ever again.”
HOW DOGS CAN HELP HEAL. Dogs are known to be excellent stress relievers. Petting a dog can calm you down and lower blood pressure. It causes your brain to release endorphins, which buffer the negative effects of stress.
Shana saved the lives of Eve (right) and Norman (left) Fertig when the three were trapped in a sudden snowstorm. (illustration credit 8.1)
Shana
REDEFINING “RESCUE DOG” MIXED BREED NEW YORK
Shana, who is half wolf and half German shepherd, wasn’t born to be wild. But when her owners’ lives were threatened, her feral survival instincts and ingenuity saved the day.
Part of a litter bred illegally to fight pit bulls, Shana was rescued from her fate by a family, only to be surrendered to a local shelter for euthanasia when the family discovered New York State requires a license to house a wolf. Instead of killing Shana, the shelter contacted Eve and Norman Fertig, who ran the Enchanted Wildlife Sanctuary in nearby Alden, New York. “She had fleas, she had worms, oh, she was a mess,” remembers Eve. “But I got her the best care, and she turned out to be the gentlest animal I have ever met.” Her wolf heritage does shine through in one respect: “She howls when she hears music, just the most beautiful melody. But otherwise she could be an ambassador for dogs.”
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