Shelter Dogs

by Peg Kehret

  Ann worried about Tyler all day. How could he possibly get along without his seeing-eye companion? It’s hard enough for any animal to stay at the shelter. What must it be like for one who couldn’t see? And now Tyler was left alone in this strange, noisy place, without the sister who had guided him for so long.

  When Ann got home and told Donna what had happened, Donna said, “Go get him. We’ll work it out somehow.”

  The next day, Ann brought Tyler home.

  Ann and Donna are foster parents for the Humane Society, often raising litters of kittens who are too young when they’re taken from their mothers. The two women also nurse injured dogs and cats back to health so that they can be adopted. Skip, Blue, and the two cats, Billy and Bear, were used to having animal visitors. They were not upset by the appearance of yet another dog.

  Tyler cautiously sniffed his way around the house, staying in the center of each room so he wouldn’t bump into any furniture. He passed the couch where Bear, Ann’s eighteen-pound cat, was sleeping.

  As he started past the cat, Tyler stopped and sniffed, putting his nose right on Bear. Then he stuck out his tongue and slurped Bear across the face.

  Ann tensed, expecting Bear to hiss or scratch Tyler’s nose. To her surprise, the cat seemed to realize that Tyler meant no harm. He just lay there while Tyler moved on. The same thing happened the first time Tyler encountered Billy. Tyler sniffed and slurped; the cat tolerated it.

  Skip often slept in the middle of the floor. More than once that first day, Tyler tripped on the inert Skip, startling both of them. Like the cats, Skip seemed to understand that Tyler didn’t intend to annoy him. Skip never growled or snapped; he just stood up and moved aside so Tyler could go by.

  Blue, on the other hand, wanted Tyler to play. He pranced in front of the newcomer with his upper body down and his tail wagging, inviting Tyler to chase him or to wrestle. Since Tyler could not see what Blue was doing, he made no response.

  Finally Blue stopped and stared at Tyler, perplexed. In the next few days, Blue tried again and again to get Tyler to play. Tyler of course ignored him, and Blue finally gave up.

  Tyler adjusted quickly to his new home. He had never encountered steps before, and there were four steps from the door to the yard. He hesitated the first few times but then seemed to remember exactly how many steps there were. From then on he went confidently up and down as if he were counting in his head.

  When Tyler stumbled on a backpack that had been left on the floor, Ann and Donna quickly picked up all shoes, books, and any other objects that Tyler might trip over.

  At first, Ann worried about a dog who had never been house-trained. She and Donna took Tyler outside as soon as he had eaten, and again every two or three hours. Although he had never lived indoors and had not been house-trained, he seemed to know what was expected. As long as he was put outside regularly, he never had an accident in the house.

  Skip and Blue had a favorite outdoor game: Ann kicked a ball for them, and they chased it. While they played, Tyler stood patiently by Ann’s side, waiting to go back indoors. He couldn’t join in the game because he couldn’t see the ball.

  A few days after adopting Tyler, Ann took him to a veterinarian who specializes in eye problems. The diagnosis was cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye. Tyler may have had vision as a puppy, but now the vet said the dog was seeing the world as if he were looking through a windshield that had two feet of snow on it. Tests showed no other problem.

  Cataracts, Ann learned, are common in border collies. She also learned that surgery could correct the problem. Although it was expensive to have surgery on both eyes, Ann never hesitated.

  “We’ll do it,” she told the vet, wondering how she and Donna would find the money to pay for it.

  The cataract surgery was scheduled. In this operation, the cloudy lens is removed from each eye and replaced with a thin clear plastic lens. The same surgery is often performed on people.

  On the morning of the surgery, Ann left Tyler at the veterinary clinic, hoping the operation would be successful.

  When she went back a few hours later, Tyler was wearing a stiff plastic cone-shaped collar that surrounded his head like a large megaphone. The collar would prevent Tyler from scratching at his eyes or from bumping his head.

  “Hello, Tyler,” Ann said.

  Tyler turned toward her voice, as he always did. And then he did something he had never done before: he walked straight toward her.

  Tyler could see.

  Ann knelt to look into his clear brown eyes. The white cloudiness was gone.

  “The operation was a complete success,” the vet said. “Tyler now has one hundred percent vision in both eyes.”

  Although Tyler was still groggy from the anesthetic, he began exploring the house as soon as Ann got him home. He went to Donna, sniffed her, and then looked hard as if putting together for the first time the familiar scent and the unfamiliar sight.

  He walked all around the house, sniffing at objects and then pausing to look at them.

  “We could almost see his brain computing as he put together the smells he recognized with the brand-new sights he was seeing,” Ann recalls.

  He walked past the couch where Bear, the cat, lay snoozing. Tyler stopped, smelled Bear, and stared at him with an expression of total astonishment on his face. Ann and Donna are sure he was thinking, “So that’s what a cat looks like!”

  Tyler had always walked with his tail tucked down between his legs, a sign of anxiety. It was as if he had tried to make himself as small as possible so that he wouldn’t accidentally bump anything.

  Now that he could see, he relaxed and began to hold his tail out in a normal position.

  When Ann went to the Humane Society the next week, everyone rejoiced at the good news. Ann was handed an envelope full of money. Other volunteers had taken up a collection to help pay for Tyler’s surgery.

  The collar stayed on for several weeks while Tyler’s eyes healed. During that time, Tyler continued to act amazed at the many things he could now see.

  Before the surgery, when Tyler had heard a car outside, he would walk to the window, cock his head, and listen. The first time he heard a car after the surgery, he went to the window and then pressed his nose against the glass, staring as the car drove past. From then on, he spent many hours each day looking out the window.

  About a month after the surgery, Ann had the three dogs in the yard. She kicked a ball and as always, Skip and Blue chased it. But this time, Tyler ran after them! His tail waved high in the air as he raced along with the other two dogs. For the first time since he had lost his sight, Tyler was playing.

  He is now a regular part of the game. But unlike Skip and Blue, Tyler doesn’t care about the ball. What he likes to do is herd the other dogs, trying to guide them toward the ball.

  He tries to herd them in other situations, too. When Ann comes home, Tyler runs behind Blue, making sure Blue goes straight to Ann.

  Soon after Tyler’s protective collar was removed, a new litter of kittens in need of foster care joined the household. Bottle-feeding a newborn kitten is a messy affair; usually the kitten’s face is quickly covered with milk.

  Tyler eagerly took over the job of cleaning up the kittens after they were fed. Just like a mother cat, he carefully licked the spilled milk from each tiny kitten’s face. The kittens purred and snuggled close to him.

  Tyler has continued to wash every litter of kittens that Ann and Donna have fostered. He also washes Skip’s and Blue’s ears each night before they go to bed.

  Tyler endured three years of neglect. He was blind, afraid, and separated from his sister, the only companion he had ever known. Yet he remained trusting and gentle.

  Ann says, “Tyler loves the baby kittens, the other dogs, the cats, us, and all our visitors. We’re so happy that he can finally see the world he loves.”

  About a Dog’s Eyesight

  Dogs can see better in the dark than humans can, but they do not see
colors as clearly as we do.

  Dogs’ eyes are sensitive to movement; when something moves, they see it more clearly than when it is still.

  One way to test your dog’s eyesight is to stand a few feet in front of her and drop a cotton ball. Do it several times. If your dog doesn’t look at the cotton ball as it falls, she probably can’t see it.

  If you suspect that your dog has trouble seeing, take her to your veterinarian. Eye problems might be a symptom of a treatable disease.

  Ivan

  FIRE-ALARM HERO

  Alexandra Brumleve hugs the family dog, American Red Cross Animal Hero Ivan, as Alexandra’s mother, Taj Brumleve, looks on. Photograph by David Harrison.

  7

  TAJ BRUMLEVE IS LEGALLY DEAF. She cannot hear a telephone ringing or someone knocking at her door. She cannot hear the high-pitched sound of a smoke alarm going off. She cannot hear when her daughter, Alexandra, cries or calls to her.

  When Alexandra was two, Taj decided to get a hearing-ear dog who would let her know when Alexandra needed her or when the phone or doorbell rang. Since there was a long waiting period to receive such a service dog, Taj decided to try to train a dog herself. She had always loved animals and knew she would like the companionship of a dog even if the home training didn’t work out.

  Although most hearing-ear dogs are purebreds, Taj decided to get her dog from an animal shelter. She wanted to adopt a dog who would otherwise not have a home.

  Taj went to the King County Animal Shelter in Kent, Washington. The shelter had a nine-week-old puppy, part black Labrador and part Siberian husky, who had been brought in because the owner couldn’t find a home for him.

  The puppy was coal black with expressive golden eyes and a friendly personality. Taj knew he would grow to be a large dog, and that was okay.

  She named him Ivan and took him home. Alexandra loved the puppy, and Ivan quickly became a cherished member of the household. Even Taj’s cat, Orca, enjoyed watching Ivan play.

  Like any puppy, Ivan required a lot of attention and training. At first, Taj concentrated on house-training him. When that was accomplished, she began teaching him hand signals for “sit” and “come.”

  As Ivan grew, he seemed to sense that Taj could not hear. When he wanted her attention, he didn’t bark; instead, he went to her and nudged her.

  A year after they adopted Ivan, Taj and her husband rented a new townhome. Alexandra got her own bedroom, and there was more room for Ivan, who was now fully grown. By then the Brumleves had learned that Alexandra was hearing-impaired like her mother, so Ivan’s training and duties became even more important. He now had two deaf people to watch out for.

  One afternoon Taj put three-year-old Alexandra in her bed for a nap. Then Taj went downstairs, with Ivan at her side. She stretched out on the couch in the living room and fell asleep. Ivan, as always, lay on the floor next to her.

  Taj was sleeping soundly when she felt something heavy on her chest. Still half-asleep, she realized it was Ivan. Ivan weighed sixty pounds, so she definitely did not want him sitting on her.

  He licked her face and pawed at her arm.

  “Ivan, get down,” she said sleepily, pushing the dog to the floor. It took her a few minutes to wake up fully, but when she did, she realized that Ivan would never jump on her unless something was wrong.

  She opened her eyes. Ivan was no longer beside her.

  The room looked foggy, and she now smelled smoke. Fear jolted through Taj.

  Fire!

  She leaped off the couch.

  Knowing Alexandra would not hear her call, Taj raced for the stairs. The thick smoke made her cough. Her eyes smarted, and her heart pounded with fear for her little girl.

  When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she met Ivan—with Alexandra at his side! Ivan had Alexandra’s shirt sleeve in his mouth. He was tugging the sleepy child forward toward the front door!

  As soon as he knew Taj was awake, Ivan had gone upstairs to awaken Alexandra and lead her to safety.

  Knowing that her daughter was safe, Taj quickly searched for the cause of the smoke, thinking she might be able to put the fire out. Nothing was burning in the kitchen. She hurried back to the stairway and looked up. Smoke billowed from around the sides of Alexandra’s bedroom door.

  Taj now knows that she should have taken Alexandra and Ivan outside immediately and stayed out herself. But that day she was only thinking of trying to put out the fire. She left Alexandra and Ivan downstairs and rushed up to Alexandra’s room. She put her hands on the door and then jerked them back. The door was too hot to open.

  She peered through the keyhole and saw nothing but blackness. Alexandra’s bedroom was so full of smoke that Taj could not even see the outline of the bed.

  “It was like looking into space,” Taj says.

  She raced back down the stairs. By then the house was so full of smoke she could barely breathe. Taj grabbed Alexandra’s hand and scooped up the terrified Orca. With Ivan following, they ran to their neighbor’s home.

  “Fire!” Taj screamed as she pounded on the neighbor’s door.

  The neighbor called 911. She kept Alexandra, Ivan, and Orca inside. Taj called her husband, Michael, at work and he rushed home.

  Taj couldn’t hear the wail of the approaching sirens, but she saw the fire trucks roar up the street. She watched as the firefighters aimed their hoses at her home.

  Horrified, she saw the firefighters pull a burning mattress out of the house. Alexandra had been napping on that mattress. Taj knew that sleeping people are sometimes overcome by smoke inhalation; they never wake up to flee from the fire.

  Tears streamed down her face as she thought what would have happened to Alexandra if Ivan had not smelled the smoke and jumped on Taj to wake her up. What if he had not gone up the stairs and entered that smoke-filled bedroom? What if he had not taken the little girl’s sleeve in his mouth and tugged until she followed him down the stairs?

  “Another fifteen minutes,” Taj says, “and Alexandra and I almost certainly would have been overcome by smoke. We probably wouldn’t have made it.”

  Thanks to Ivan, the firefighters arrived in time to extinguish the blaze before it spread to the rest of the house. Taj and Alexandra had some breathing problems from inhaling smoke, but they recovered fully by the next day.

  When the fire was finally out, Taj and Michael gathered basic necessities and prepared to move temporarily to the Westin Hotel in Seattle, where Michael worked. Taj made sure to take Ivan’s blue food dish along.

  The fire happened on the day before Thanksgiving; Ivan was fifteen months old.

  On Thanksgiving Day, as Taj and Michael looked at what was left of their smoke-blackened home, they gave thanks that Ivan had saved Alexandra and Taj.

  The Brumleves lost nearly seven thousand dollars worth of belongings, including Alexandra’s bed and most of her toys and books. They had just finished painting and decorating the child’s bedroom; now it was destroyed by smoke and water damage. But the losses seemed unimportant compared to the tragedy they might have faced.

  Investigators said the fire started in Alexandra’s room and speculated that she might have been playing with matches.

  Because of her hearing impairment, Alexandra still had a limited vocabulary. She couldn’t tell anyone exactly what had happened. Regardless of how the fire began, one fact was clear: Ivan first woke Taj, and then raced upstairs to get Alexandra.

  “That dog saved the mother’s life and the child’s life,” says Steve Gengo of the Redmond, Washington, Fire Department. “He acted on instinct; he saved his family.”

  Each year the Seattle/King County chapter of the American Red Cross has a “Heroes Breakfast” to pay tribute to ordinary people who have performed unusual acts of courage or kindness. A year after the fire, the Red Cross honored Ivan as an Animal Hero.

  By then the Brumleves had moved to Kansas, but Taj brought Ivan back to Seattle to receive his award. Ivan sat in the seat next to hers for the plane
ride and was given a set of wings by the captain.

  At the award breakfast, Ivan wore a vest and bow tie. He seemed to enjoy all the attention and wagged his tail happily at the crowd.

  Taj gave Ivan’s acceptance speech for him. “The lesson that should come out of this,” she said, “is that if you love your animals, they will love you.”

  Besides his Red Cross award, Ivan was honored by Heinz Pet Products, which gave him a six-month supply of dog food and a certificate of merit.

  Ivan continues to be both a hearing-ear dog and a beloved pet for Taj and Alexandra. “To me,” says Taj, “Ivan is the most wonderful mutt in the world.”

  About Fire Prevention

  Fire destroys more property and claims more lives each year than tornadoes, floods, or any other natural disaster. Most fire fatalities and injuries in the United States occur in the victim’s own home. Here are some things you can do to keep yourself and your family safe:

  1.

  Make sure every level of your home has a working smoke detector.

  2.

  Be sure your house numbers can be seen from the street.

  3.

  Have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen.

  4.

  Never leave cooking food unwatched.

  5.

  If you see a fire in your home, get out immediately. It is too dangerous to telephone for help from a burning home. Call 911 on a neighbor’s phone.

  6.

  The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has stickers to put on or near entry doors to alert firefighters that animals are inside. The stickers provide space for you to write a phone number to be called in case of emergency. You can learn more about this organization at www.aspca.org or write to:

  ASPCA

  442 E. 92nd St.

  New York NY 10128

  Bridgette

  SEIZURE-ALERT DOG