Devoted

by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh

  Lanteigne quickly went to be with Lilly, visiting while she was in the hospital for weeks. The leg that was run over by the train had to be amputated, and a later surgery mended Lilly’s fractured pelvis and her rear left leg, which is now supported with steel plates. But she was alive.

  Lilly saved the life of David Lanteigne’s mother by pulling her out of the path of an oncoming train. (illustration credit 33.2)

  “I’ve been through a lot in my life,” says Lanteigne. “And in my job I work murders and stabbings and shootings and I’m fine. But I had never been so devastated in my entire life as when Lilly got hurt.”

  As news of Lilly’s heroics got out, strangers flooded the hospital with more than $76,000 in donations to help cover the cost of Lilly’s veterinary treatment and physical therapy. Inspired by the outreach and support he received, Lanteigne founded Lilly’s Fund, which raises money to help improve the quality of life for pit bulls in shelters. Lilly does her part by attending events to promote her breed. “When people meet her, it’s not ‘That’s a scary pit bull,’ but ‘What a sweet, sweet dog,’ ” says Lanteigne. “She’s absolutely inspiring.”

  LILLY’S FUND Inspired by Lilly’s heroic act, her family started Lilly’s Fund to heighten awareness about the pit bull breed and their positive attributes and characteristics. Lilly’s Fund raises money to support responsible dog ownership, adoption of pit bulls from shelters, and the repeal of breed-specific laws.

  Rocky, a Lab mix, was rescued and later trained by prisoners in the California Correctional Center. (illustration credit 34.1)

  Rocky

  LEADING THE WAY MIXED BREED CALIFORNIA

  When Rocky, a yellow Lab mix, arrived as a stray at the Lassen County Animal Shelter in California, the staff knew that the petrified dog stood no chance of being adopted. With bullets in his hip, a case of worms, and a terror of people, Rocky was destined to be euthanized.

  Then, at the last minute, he was rescued by Pups on Parole, a program that pairs traumatized and abused homeless dogs, who would otherwise be put to sleep, with prison inmates entrusted to socialize the dogs so they might be adopted. And so Rocky found himself in the care of the residents at the California Correctional Center, a state prison in Susanville, California. The inmates knew they were saving Rocky’s life, but they would never have guessed Rocky would end up being a lifesaver himself.

  In February 2011, Dawn Tibbetts, the secretary to the prison’s captain, saw Rocky’s picture in the facility’s newsletter and thought she had found the perfect dog to accompany her husband, who’d retired from working at the correctional center, on his rock hunts. Floyd Tibbetts’s hobby—searching for petrified wood, gems, gold, and special stones—involves long days in the Lassen National Forest, which is populated by mountain lions, bears, and coyotes. “There are dangers, and I didn’t like him going out there by himself,” says Dawn, “so I went to see Rocky. He was skittish and just wanted to go home with me. I went to my husband and said, ‘Guess what? We have a new member of our family.’ ”

  PUPS BEHIND BARS

  Dogs are rescued from shelters and trained in prison; they’re made available for adoption after they complete the Pups on Parole program.

  Dog-training programs in various states have been shown to have significant rehabilitative effects on prisoners. Overall, the programs help to improve discipline and socialization skills and so help the prisoners become potentially productive citizens.

  Prison dog-training programs exist in many forms throughout the United States—service-dog training, police dog training, and general training for potential adoption.

  Although it took Rocky some time to adjust, Floyd was immediately smitten. He went out and bought a new truck that had room for Rocky to have his own seat in the crew cab, and began taking the dog out on his hunts with him. Then, in July 2011, only five months after the Tibbettses adopted Rocky, Floyd set off with him for an hour of rock hunting at 9:30 a.m. When they weren’t home by 5 p.m., Dawn was in a panic. She called her son, who went in search of him. At 7:30, as she called 911 for a search and rescue, Floyd pulled into the driveway. “He was so delirious he left the back wheels in the middle of the street. He was so weak he couldn’t stand up. He wasn’t making any sense. He was bloody. I said, ‘I don’t understand how you drove home,’ and he said, ‘I don’t know if I drove home or if Rocky did.’ ”

  Floyd’s heart rate was dangerously low. An ambulance transported him to a hospital almost 90 miles away, in Reno, Nevada, where he received a pacemaker. Only then was he able to tell the story of how Rocky had saved his life.

  After arriving at the site to look for rocks, Floyd and Rocky began hiking. Then, “I got violently ill, fell into the bushes, and lost my glasses,” remembers Floyd, who had suffered from heart ailments in the past, although none life threatening. “Rocky just stayed and licked my hand. He stayed right there with me.” For seven and a half hours, Rocky remained by Floyd’s side, curled up next to him and licking him, until he was able to struggle up and start making his way back toward the truck. But Rocky refused to go with him. “I thought, ‘Rocky, I don’t need this,’ ” Floyd remembers. But Floyd slowly realized he was so disoriented he was walking in the wrong direction. He turned around and allowed Rocky to lead him back to the safety of the truck.

  Once Floyd was safely back home, one of Dawn’s first calls was to the Pups on Parole program. They helped find the inmate—who has since been released from prison—who was primarily responsible for Rocky’s rehabilitation. “I got to tell him, and he was very proud,” says Dawn. As for Rocky, he is still riding shotgun with Floyd when they go off hunting for treasures. “He’s the most loving and affectionate dog I have ever had,” says Dawn, “so this has been a blessing for him, too.”

  Rocky and Floyd Tibbetts (illustration credit 34.2)

  DOING HARD TIME On August 12, 1924, Pep, a black Labrador retriever, was sentenced to life without parole for killing a cat who belonged to the wife of Pennsylvania’s governor, Gifford Pinchot. The governor, on the other hand, claimed that Pep had been sent to act as a mascot for the prisoners.

  K’os and Hunter Guindon pose for a picture after K’os’s induction into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame. (illustration credit 35.1)

  K’os

  STAVING OFF DISASTER NEAPOLITAN MASTIFF CANADA

  The Guindon family agrees that K’os (pronounced chaos), a Neapolitan mastiff, is patriarch Jason’s dog. The two of them go everywhere together by day, and at night, K’os chooses to sleep on Jason’s side of the bed. But K’os doesn’t slumber for long: It turns out that much of his night is spent checking in on the Guindons’ teenage son, Hunter.

  The Ontario, Canada, family wasn’t aware of the dog’s ritual until the parents were awakened in the middle of the night by the normally placid K’os barking furiously at them. While Jason ran downstairs to see if there was an intruder, Linda followed K’os into her son’s room, where she discovered Hunter having a grand mal seizure. As she called an ambulance, K’os lay down beside Hunter to comfort him, remaining there until the paramedics took him to the hospital. Says Jason, “I only remember going to bed that night and waking up with the paramedics standing over me and K’os lying beside me.”

  When Hunter suffered another seizure just a few months later, K’os again alerted his parents. Hunter is no longer surprised by Kos’s visits: “I can hear him come in all the time at night. Sometimes I will see him poke the door open and check on me.” Adds Jason, “K’os normally sleeps on our bed, but several times a night I will hear him go down the hall, check in on Hunter, and then come back.” Hunter, who was subsequently diagnosed with epilepsy, has since undergone brain surgery and is now seizure free.

  K’os was inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame in Toronto in 2011. (illustration credit 35.2)

  Frank Petito, M.D., a neurologist at Cornell University, explains that a grand mal seizure would be easy for an alert dog to recognize as something amiss. “For starters, it cau
ses breathing to become louder and more rapid,” he says, “and then the arms and legs jerk dramatically. A patient will then stop breathing and stiffen and turn blue,” which, while terrifying, is actually a sign that the seizure is about to subside. “The body self-corrects,” says Petito, “with the cells that are firing electrically in the brain returning to normal.”

  NEAPOLITAN MASTIFF

  ORIGIN: An ancient breed from Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia, used by the Roman army

  COLOR(S): Solid gray (blue), black, mahogany, and tawny

  HEIGHT: 24 to 31 inches

  TEMPERAMENT: Loyal, protective, watchful, calm, and steady

  “A grand mal seizure is physiologically dramatic,” agrees dog expert and trainer Philip Levine, “and given that 80 percent of a dog’s consciousness is about odor, it’s something they would be very aware of.” Levine, who is diabetic, points to the ability of his German shepherd to detect when his blood sugar is too low before he himself is aware of it. “She sits in front of me panting very heavily. The first time it happened I kept saying, ‘What?’ and then, a few minutes later, I was on the floor. Now I know that when she does it I need to go test my levels—and she’s always right.”

  Owners looking for a supersensitive dog needn’t run out and adopt a Neapolitan mastiff or German shepherd. Says Levine of K’os’s devotion and care, “This isn’t a breed-specific affair. This is a good dog affair. K’os is extraordinarily generous in terms of his concern and service to his family.” Says Jason Guindon of his son’s savior, “I named him K’os because I had thought a large dog would put a little excitement in our lives. Instead, he has brought a calm, comforting peacefulness to our family. He’s literally everyone’s best friend. He’s simply perfect.”

  WHY DO DOGS BARK? Barking is most likely a result of domestication. It’s commonplace among domesticated dogs but rare among wolves and other wild dogs, which howl and yip. Barking is seen as a warning signal for humans, who are able to distinguish certain types of barking—for example, alerting to a problem, or welcoming you home.

  A younger Dingo aboard the Joy B (illustration credit 36.1)

  Dingo

  A TRUE SURVIVOR MIXED BREED SOUTH CAROLINA

  Friends of John Batchelor waved to him as they sailed past him and his boat Joy B, which was anchored at Memory Rock in the Bahamas. Batchelor, a Canadian, was a seasoned cruiser, so there was no need to worry about him, despite his decision to pause at the navigational rock favored by drug runners and modern-day pirates for its proximity to Florida and the Bahamas. But three weeks later, when the couple passed by again and saw the boat in the same spot, they called for help.

  Nathan Moody, a volunteer with the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association, boarded the boat to find a disaster: The boat had been ransacked. Furniture and clothing were strewn about the cabin. Batchelor was nowhere to be found. But there, buried beneath rubble, lay his beloved dog Dingo. With protruding ribs and a deep gash in his hind leg, Dingo had managed to survive without food, water, or his companion. “I thought he was dead,” remembers Moody. “His left eyeball was out of its socket because he was so dehydrated, but I checked his pulse and he was breathing.”

  But Dingo was too weak to walk. Moody carried the dog to his boat and rushed him 18 miles to the marina, then to an animal hospital in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. With Batchelor presumed dead, the sailor’s friends—who spoke of the dog and his owner’s mutual adoration for each other—set up a fund to pay Dingo’s veterinary bills, and put out feelers to see who might be able to adopt the dog when he had recovered.

  DOGS WITH SEA LEGS

  Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Splash, a Portuguese water dog, sailed together off the shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fala, a Scottish terrier, was a constant sailing companion, and even went on voyages as far as the West Indies.

  Sinbad, the world-famous U.S. Coast Guard mascot, was a mixed breed who sailed aboard the cutter Campbell during World War II and served for 11 years.

  Meanwhile, while Dingo lay in the vet’s office on an IV drip, Nathan Moody began to fall in love with the 12-year-old Lab-greyhound mix. “He connects to people right off the bat,” says Moody’s brother, Rob. “He looks at you with an adorable face, he respects your space, and he does what he’s told. If anyone has earned the right to live, it’s Dingo.” Nathan spoke up and said Dingo had found an adopter in the Bahamas—him.

  At his new home, Dingo settled in immediately. “I have a pit bull named Ziggy who is very mothering to him,” says Nathan, “and she sat beside him the whole time he recovered.”

  But Dingo’s luck hadn’t changed immediately: A few months after he went to live with Moody and Ziggy, they were attacked by a pack of stray dogs and he was severely wounded, with a resulting infection in his foot. That’s when Rob, who lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, offered to transport the dog back to his vet, in preparation for Nathan’s imminent move to Columbia, South Carolina. “We decided I would take him on my boat back to West Palm Beach and then drive from there,” says Rob. “If we had been stopped by border patrol with no records for a dog, we wouldn’t have made it.”

  After a 12-hour car ride, Dingo arrived in Wilmington, where he would spend weeks in the care of vet Dr. Michele Rohrer while she fought to save his foot. “Dingo is happy, kind, and sweet,” says Rohrer, “and he has a will to live.” No one feels more strongly about Dingo than Nathan, in whom Dingo has found another beloved companion. “There is so much strength in his eyes, so much personality,” says Nathan. “He went through so much trauma, and is such a fighter. There’s just something about him. I’ve fallen in love.”

  Dingo with Rob Moody, who helped bring Dingo to the United States (illustration credit 36.2)

  JUST HOW AMAZING IS DINGO’S SURVIVAL? Dogs need water every day, as 70 percent of their body is made up of water. Dogs will die if their body loses even one-tenth of its water. To survive, an average medium-size dog requires at least two ounces of water every day.

  Wilma was rescued by the captain of Steve Sietos’s firehouse; Sietos later adopted her. (illustration credit 37.1)

  Wilma

  HOLISTIC HEROINE PIT BULL NEW YORK

  Thanks to Wilma, Steve Sietos may very well be the world’s only fireman/herbalist/energy healer. He certainly is the only one in his Brooklyn, New York, engine company. He was a recent Fire Academy graduate when his captain appeared with a dog he had found. At about six months old, Wilma was hungry, her hair was matted, her tongue hung out of her mouth at an odd angle, and she had a badly torn-up paw. But she never stopped wagging her tail. “We threw her in the rig and brought her to the vet,” he says, “where they told us she had an infection and stitched her up. The captain said, ‘Who wants this dog?’ and I knew I did—it was like I knew her—but I was a junior guy and you don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”

  For one week a different fireman took the pit bull home each night, only to return her, saying they couldn’t keep her, even though they all agreed that she was the sweetest dog they had ever met. The problem was that she self-mutilated, ripping the pads off the bottoms of her paws until they bled. In a last-ditch effort, the captain brought Wilma back to the vet, who suggested she be put to sleep. “That’s when I knew I could speak up,” remembers Sietos.

  FIREHOUSE DOGS

  The Dalmatian has been the iconic firehouse dog, dating back 200 years.

  Today, firehouse dogs mostly serve as guard dogs, mascots, and companions to firefighters.

  In 2012, the National Fire Dog Monument went on a 2,000-mile cross-country tour before being erected outside a Washington, D.C., firehouse.

  Wilma was diagnosed with cerebral palsy—she couldn’t walk more than a block without collapsing—but her physical suffering didn’t seem to affect her spirit. “She is sweet and shy, like me,” says Sietos. “And I don’t know how to explain it, but she has such an energy about her. I knew she didn’t want to die.” But $8,
000 in vet bills later, Wilma was no better, and Sietos was bankrupt, walking to work because he couldn’t afford to take the subway. In desperation, he called a psychic suggested by a friend.

  “She said, ‘Oh, honey, your angels are coming in and there’s nothing you can do, you’ll have to put her down. I will pray for you both,’ ” Sietos remembers. “I cried for about five days straight, and Wilma was licking my eyes the whole time and that’s when I said to myself, ‘No more vets.’ So I started researching herbs and flower essences online that help immune systems, and that was the beginning of her healing.” It was also the beginning of Sietos’s path to becoming a clinical herbalist, now helping people as well as dogs in need.

  Sietos changed Wilma’s diet as alternative medicine dictates for people with compromised immune systems: no carbohydrates, no yeast. He also began giving her a daily regimen of herbs. Soon, he was planning regimens for friends who were ill, as well. He says that his colleagues were bemused if grudgingly tolerant, teasing him that he was a “witch doctor,” until he helped a colleague’s wife who was struggling with chemotherapy. Thanks to that, as well as the tinctures for muscle aches and the holistic cold remedies that he leaves in the firehouse kitchen, Sietos says his colleagues have embraced his other career as a clinical herbalist and healer. “I’m treating the guys at the firehouse and their friends and their families,” he says. “They have been the best trainers because they can be a rough crowd,” with a definite soft side for a certain pit bull. Wilma is welcome at the firehouse and accompanies Sietos when he works a 24-hour shift.