Devoted

by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh

  Shana, who grew to be 160 pounds, and the Fertigs became inseparable. They were together in an outer building on the property one warm October day when suddenly, the temperature dropped and snow began to fall. Within minutes, scores of trees cracked and fell, their limbs shattering from the sudden frost. The Fertigs stepped outside only to see that fallen trees had made it impossible for them to make their way back to their house. Then, a tree fell in front of the building they had just left, barring their way back in.

  TO THE RESCUE

  Bear, a black Labrador retriever, saved his family’s 14-month-old son, Stanley, from drowning after the toddler fell into the family pool. Bear jumped in the pool and held Stanley’s head above the water until help arrived.

  Belle, a beagle, saved her owner’s life by contacting 911 on his cell phone after he had a diabetic seizure and collapsed. Belle accepted the VITA Wireless Samaritan Award in 2006 for her courageous act and was the first canine to receive this honor.

  Toby, a golden retriever, saved his owner, Debbie, from choking to death on an apple. The dog jumped, pushing hard on her chest and forcing the apple out of her throat.

  “I said to my husband, ‘What do we do?’ ” remembers Eve, who was 81 at the time. “And he said, ‘We’re trapped.’ ” The couple huddled together, trying to keep warm in the freezing temperatures. Then they noticed that Shana was busy burrowing. “She was digging a den as a wolf would dig a den, and then we lost sight of her,” Eve recounts. “About half an hour later, we started hearing these howls and barks. She had made a tunnel back to the house, and wanted us to follow her, but we couldn’t because it would only fit one person or a dog, and the branches from the trees were so dangerous.”

  When the couple didn’t come as called, Shana crawled back through the trench she had built, returning to the couple with one leg pierced by branches. That injury still troubles her. “She was in bad shape,” says Eve. “But she watched us argue about what we were going to do and then she just grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me onto her back. I said, ‘Norman—hang on to my ankle!’ And she dragged us through the tunnel back home.”

  The fire chief, concerned about the octogenarians after neighbors couldn’t reach them, arrived to find them collapsed on the porch, with Shana lying on top of them to keep them warm. “We had no heat and no hot water, and they wanted to take us to the firehouse, but they said, ‘Your wolf can’t go.’ And I said, ‘If the wolf doesn’t go, I don’t go.’ She had always shown us such incredible devotion. So they came back with food and a generator.”

  Only months later, Shana saved the day again when the Fertigs’ furnace caught on fire; she dragged the sleeping couple out of bed and onto the porch. “She grabbed me by the nightgown and pulled me out to the porch, and then she went back for Norman. We called the fire chief and he said, ‘What now?’ ” Eve remembers.

  Norman passed away in 2011, as did their son, but Eve continues to have Shana’s constant company. “She’s always by my side. I don’t have anyone to eat dinner with anymore, but Shana sits beside me, and she sleeps beside me every night. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says it all: ‘Little Red Riding Hood Had It Wrong.’ ”

  Shana was honored with a Topps “American Heroes” trading card. (illustration credit 8.2)

  THE BIG BAD WOLF? There are many myths and misconceptions about wolves, partly thanks to fairy tales, such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs,” that portray them as evil creatures. However, fairy-tale wolves are not representative of real wolves, which in the past hundred years have been responsible for only two human deaths in North America.

  Rosie, a golden retriever, helped witnesses recall traumatizing events through the program Courthouse Dogs. (illustration credit 9.1)

  Rosie

  TAKING THE STAND GOLDEN RETRIEVER NEW YORK

  The bond between a dog and a child is the stuff of legend, but the relationship between Rosie and Jessica made history in June 2011, when the 11-year-old golden retriever became the first courthouse dog in New York State. Sitting by Jessica’s side on the witness stand, Rosie comforted, calmed, and encouraged the teenager as she testified against a family member accused of raping her over the course of years.

  Consoling children wasn’t the job Rosie was originally meant to do. Bred by Dale Picard and his wife, Lu, who together founded and run Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities (ECAD), Rosie was meant to follow the path of her siblings and become a service dog. But within months, “it was clear that wasn’t going to work,” laughs Dale. “It took 90 days to teach her how to turn the light on, and then she wouldn’t turn it off because her nose was so sensitive. When you would ask her to open the door, she’d look at you like, ‘Oh, no—you open it and we will go through it together.’ ”

  Rosie began to spend her days as Dale Picard’s ambassador for ECAD at the Green Chimneys School in Brewster, New York, where the special-needs students train the Picards’ puppies to become service dogs. At Green Chimneys, Dale noticed Rosie’s inherent talent for soothing children. “Rosie’s great gift is she knows when a child is stressed … She can’t stand for a kid to be sad, and will go to them to comfort them.”

  COURTROOM COMPANIONS

  Courthouse dogs are professionally trained assistance dogs who are graduates from service dog organizations. During criminal investigations and prosecutions, they help people suffering from physical, psychological, or emotional trauma.

  States with jurisdictions using courthouse dogs in the United States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington State.

  For the next eight years, while Picard worked with the children and the puppies, Rosie gravitated to the speech and occupational therapy rooms. The students were encouraged to talk by issuing Rosie one of the 80 verbal commands she knows. In physical therapy, the students would race after her over obstacles, rewarded by watching a dog do as they asked. “There are ‘Tell’ dogs, which is like a guide dog who tells you when to cross the street,” explains Dale Picard. “Rosie would walk you right in front of a car. She’s an ‘Ask’ dog; those are the dogs who will lie by your feet until you ask them to go get you your gloves. Then they’ll get you those gloves and lie back down by your side.”

  These “Ask” qualities were precisely what Dr. David Crenshaw, the clinical director of the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, was looking for when he began supervising the case of Jessica, a then 15-year-old living at the facility. As the case against her accused rapist was being prepared to go to trial, Crenshaw began thinking about how to offer the traumatized teen comfort in court. He began reading about Courthouse Dogs, an organization founded by a former Washington State prosecutor, Ellen O’Neill-Stephens, and a veterinarian, Celeste Walsen, and dedicated to standardizing the use of facility dogs in the investigation and prosecution of crimes. “I want courthouse dogs to be as common as Dalmatians once were in firehouses,” says O’Neill-Stephens, who first witnessed the calming effect that the trained dogs could have when she was working with juveniles.

  Rosie and one of the many children she helped along the way (illustration credit 9.2)

  “Trauma shuts down the verbal areas of the brain,” explains Crenshaw, “and it’s not only that you can’t process what happened years later. It’s that it’s still hard to find the words to express what happened. Anxiety not only interferes with information processing but also with access to memory. The science of a dog in the courtroom is that the dog’s presence reduces the stressed person’s heart rate,” he continues. “This reduces the automatic nervous system so kids don’t freeze on the stand. Children with trauma history have such a high level of arousal that until you calm their systems, they simply can’t process information.” In addition, being near a dog stimulates the production of oxytocin, the “feel good” hormone released by nursing mothers.

&
nbsp; Rosie and her owner, Dale Picard, enjoy a walk on the beach. (illustration credit 9.3)

  Dale Picard, who received a call from Crenshaw after Courthouse Dogs passed his name along, knew that Rosie was the perfect dog for the job. “When a witness isn’t stressed, the dog won’t move,” he says. “But the second the dog starts to feel the child’s stress, it will look at the witness or wag its tail. If the child isn’t answering the question, or the prosecutor comes back with a stronger tone, that will stress the child out, and the dog will rub her head or neck on the child’s leg. If the pressure gets too strong, the dog will either take her nose and nudge the child’s hand or come across her legs and try to put space between person and child.”

  For three months, Rosie and Jessica prepared by playing together, strengthening their bond for their day in the courtroom. Rosie had her work cut out for her, as she also had to learn to tolerate long stretches of sitting in the tight space of the witness stand. When her days with Jessica ended, she went home with her handler and sat in front of a chair, facing a barrier that moved closer every day until it simulated the witness box. “We were two days before the court date and we still didn’t know if she could do it,” remembers Picard.

  The day of the trial, Jessica and Rosie arrived early and took their spot in the witness box so that Rosie wouldn’t be seen by the jury and perhaps influence their feelings. “Jessica was petting Rosie the entire time,” remembers Crenshaw, “and at one point during the hour she testified, Jessica took her shoe off and buried her foot in Rosie’s fur, so the dog could [attempt to] read her heart rate. The prosecutor said, ‘Is the man who raped you in the courtroom?’ and we can assume Jessica’s heart rate spiked, and she froze. She was just immobilized. Then Rosie put her head in Jessica’s lap, and Jessica was able to lift her hand and point.” The jury found the defendant guilty.

  The legacy of the relationship between Jessica and Rosie is far greater than the verdict. Dr. Crenshaw has since adopted Rosie’s younger sister, Ivy, as the in-house therapy dog at the Children’s Home. “She has made the most extraordinary difference,” says Crenshaw. “Troubled children will get down on the floor in a therapy session to lie with her, and the next thing you know they are recounting the horrors of their lives that they have never been able to share until now, thanks to the safety of being next to Ivy. And staff members who are stressed to the max will come and pet her for a few minutes and re-center. It’s impossible to be with her and not feel calmer.”

  Rosie passed away in November 2012, but her effect on Jessica and many others lives on.

  A FURRY BEST FRIEND Dogs can be great companions for children. They can provide them unconditional love and friendship. An Australian study shows that children who grow up with dogs are more likely to maintain a healthy weight, and studies have linked owning pets with improved social skills and self-confidence.

  Jasmine, a rescued greyhound, cared for more than 50 animals including Bramble, an orphaned roe deer. (illustration credit 10.1)

  Jasmine

  THE FRIENDLIEST DOG IN TOWN GREYHOUND ENGLAND

  No one ever expected Jasmine to love again. In 2003, English police officers discovered a greyhound cowering in a locked shed, severely malnourished and filthy, clearly abused. They drove her to the nearest place they could think of: the Nuneaton and Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, founded and run by Geoff Grewcock with the intent of caring for sick and injured animals and birds. And so an act of fate would change the life of not only a dog and a person, but hundreds of other animals, as well.

  “When I first met Jasmine, you could tell she had been emotionally devastated,” Grewcock remembers. Determined to nurse her back to emotional and physical health, he and his staff showered her with affection. “Within a month, she became a loving dog,” he says. “You could tell that she was a very gentle dog by nature. And then she started nurturing the other animals.”

  Her nurturing instinct first showed itself with Toby and Buster, a pair of abandoned puppies. When they arrived at the sanctuary, Jasmine approached as a mother dog would: licking them and picking them up in her mouth to carry them around the property. Then there was Roxy, a three-month-old fox found tied to a railing. “Jasmine seemed to know right away that the fox had been mistreated, and came up and started licking her,” says Grewcock. “Roxy hated being left alone and would start to whine, and Jasmine would walk up to Roxy and lie beside her, and Roxy would stop immediately.” Bramble, an orphaned 11-week-old fawn, received the same attention, as did five fox cubs, four badger cubs, fifteen chicks, eight guinea pigs, and fifteen rabbits.

  GREYHOUND

  ORIGIN: Egypt

  COLOR(S): Variety

  HEIGHT: 27 to 30 inches

  TEMPERAMENT: Known for their incredible speed and sweet disposition. A great companion for families and other dogs, greyhounds show an independent streak, so patient training is required.

  “There are certain things only an animal mother can provide, and Jasmine provided it,” says Grewcock. “She would nuzzle and lick the younger animals, which is especially important for young mammals such as foxes, badgers, and squirrels, who need a warm lick on their bellies to stimulate feeding and urinating.”

  Jasmine’s love knew no boundaries: One of her favorites to cuddle with was Cleo, a Canada goose. And Parsley, another resident greyhound who wore a muzzle before Jasmine’s arrival, became so attached to Jasmine that “all of his aggressiveness went away, and he never had to wear a muzzle again,” recounts Grewcock. But always, at the end of Jasmine’s day—and at the beginning—was Grewcock, who lives at the sanctuary. “She loved meeting new people, and would always come running out of the house to give them a friendly lick,” he says. “I always knew I wanted to keep her, and I’m so glad I did.”

  Jasmine passed away in the fall of 2011, an event that was marked by a service where townspeople came to pay their respects. Then, “Emails and letters started flooding in from around the world, all out of respect to our wonderful greyhound,” says Grewcock. The accompanying donations, upon which the sanctuary relies, have allowed Grewcock and his staff to continue the care they provide to the other mistreated animals at the sanctuary—if not with Jasmine’s personal style, then at least in her name. “Her passing was so sad,” says Grewcock, “but she was a legendary animal, and her legacy continues.”

  Jasmine and some of the animals in her care at the Nuneaton and Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary (illustration credit 10.2)

  KEEPING GOOD COMPANY The canine star Lassie, of the eponymous television series, was played by many similar-looking collies. Each Lassie had a canine companion or companions to keep them company on the set, including a pair of miniature poodles and a Jack Russell terrier.

  Wendy, a Labradoodle, and Richard Heath share a special moment. (illustration credit 11.1)

  Wendy

  GOOD FOR THE HEART AND SOUL LABRADOODLE TEXAS

  Elaine Heath never imagined owning a dog. Especially, she says, “a big black dog. I’ve never been a big dog lover.”

  But she did love her retiree husband, Richard, very much, and years of chronic illnesses—including congestive heart failure and kidney and liver disease—were threatening the veteran’s life. As for his quality of life, that had vanished long ago. Elaine embraced the idea of a service dog to provide constant companionship, and after Richard endured a particularly difficult three-week stay in the hospital, the couple came off the waiting list.

  The dog selected for Richard was a black Labradoodle named Wendy. When the trainer brought her to the hospital for the family to meet her, “Wendy came into the room, walked right up to him, looked into his eyes, and put her head in his lap,” Elaine says, still crying at the memory. “It was as if she was saying, ‘Hi Dad, I’m home.’ They were made for each other.”

  Immediately, Wendy’s presence in the household changed Richard’s daily routine. Instead of sitting in the same chair all day while his wife was at work, he was forced to move, even if just to feed Wendy and
let her in and out to relieve herself. Wendy would pull him out of the chair with a tug rope to help him stand, and if he lost his balance, she would brace against him. She helped with the laundry, picking up whatever was dropped on the floor and placing it in the dryer, and, “unlike children, she puts her toys away,” Elaine says with a laugh. Wendy also learned to alert to Richard’s diabetes, letting him know if his levels were off; one evening, stationed at his bedside, she nudged him until he awakened to find that a temporary catheter he needed to wear was about to overflow. “How in the world would she know that?” asks Elaine.

  MIX, MATCH, MORPH

  The goldendoodle is a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle. Breeders started to mix the two in the mid-1990s, and goldendoodles have become a fast favorite as family dogs.

  The Labradoodle comes from a mix of Labrador retriever and a poodle. A retired veterinarian created the breed in the 1980s for an allergy sufferer who needed a service dog.