by David Frei
Jessie was a warrior, as are all of these kids, but she packed more into her life than any healthy person could have done. Rock stars, wrestlers, professional athletes—they all knew and loved Jessie. When she passed after her nine-year fight with neuroblastoma, she left with a full resume.
Dylan came to the House from Australia. He arrived in 2005 after his parents had been told that he had six months to live. He’s been a special kid to us, and his family—his older brother, Cain, and his parents, Melissa and Tim—have been the heart and soul of the House over these years. Dylan is always there for the dogs, and the dogs are always there for him. Once, after a very difficult and painful oral surgery, he was hurting. His mom suggested that he take Teigh for a walk to see if that would help. He did, and he reported that the walk got his mind off of the pain.
Andrea was fighting a tumor that involved her vertebrae, and she gradually was being paralyzed. That didn’t stop her from making every therapy dog night, though. She was a special friend of Angel and Mr. Gruffyd Babayan (the Brussels Griffon who visited with handler Gay Cropper), and she got a big kick out of Uno.
Andrea and Dylan had a private audience with the Pope when he visited New York City in 2008, and the two of them were pictured in the New York Post with Angel as they talked of their anticipation of meeting His Holiness.
Dylan battles on; sadly, Andrea passed in 2010. Too many of them do.
One of our favorite young boys asked to have Angel in bed with him as his dying wish, so she was there as he was taking his last breaths. Yes, that was tough.
One of the kids wrote a letter about his love for the dogs at the House:
My Doggies at Ronald McDonald House
By George Yeomans
Age 9
My name is George Yeomans. I have been staying at the house since the end of May. The one thing I really love about staying here is all the dogs that come to visit. I enjoy seeing all the dogs and giving them cuddles. Some of them can do tricks, like shake and roll over. They are all such nice dogs. They make me feel happy.
I know the names of all the dogs. They are Butter and Serafina, Teigh and Belle, Parker, Phoebe, Tucker, and Mr. Gruffyd Babayan. I know all the types of dogs that they are. I remember Phoebe is a Pomeranian because I think of a pomegranate!
Thank you for bringing all your dogs to see me and all the other children. It makes me really happy. The lady behind the desk in the lobby, Christine, always rings me up to tell me when the dogs are here. So I only miss them when I am at the hospital.
I had to leave my puppy behind, at home in England, with my Granny. I miss England but I try not to think about it. The dogs make me forget about it and that makes me feel happy. Thank you and your dogs.
Love,
George
The dogs are part of the family at the House. They are invited to every event, every chapel service, every Mass—everything that happens at the House happens with a dog in attendance. Dogs have been there for visits from the Archbishop, baptisms, prayer services, weddings, and, sadly, memorial services. They have probably eaten everything that has been catered in for those events, because the kids won’t let them go away hungry.
The dogs dress up on Halloween, accompanying the kids in their costumes. Angel once rode around the entire block in a toy car pedaled by Ashlynn without ever moving from the passenger seat. Teigh appeared at the House on Halloween as Batman and Superman and as Santa at Christmas.
The dogs are always invited to the annual volunteer appreciation dinner at the New York Athletic Club and recognized for their work. For their part in establishing the program, Teigh and Belle represented all of the therapy dogs and were honored on stage at the Waldorf Astoria, site of the annual Ronald McDonald House Gala that raises millions of dollars for the House every year.
If something is happening at or for the House, you can be certain that there will be therapy dog teams there, representing the program. This happens for a couple of reasons. First, the dogs can help set the mood and can help get families and kids to attend and be part of the event—having the dogs can be a draw for them. Once people are there, the dogs can help them relax and feel good about being there.
Second, the therapy dog teams are part of the House family—volunteers that are appreciated just as much as all of the other volunteers. I have always been impressed by how the staff treats and recognizes its volunteers. That’s part of why there is a waiting list to volunteer there, and why volunteers stay for years.
The following statement is from the House’s website (www.rmh-newyork.org):
Ronald McDonald House of New York was created by volunteers and continues to rely on volunteers to enhance its services and programs. Your warm and caring presence as a volunteer has a positive impact on the life of a child and families who need to live at the House while undergoing cancer treatment at a local hospital.
One summer Saturday night, Cheri and I had been out to dinner in the neighborhood with Teigh and Belle at a sidewalk café where the dogs could be part of the evening. While we were there, Cheri got a call to tell her that one of her kids had passed away at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. It was quite late, about 11 p.m., but we had to go by the House so she could make some calls and see what she could do to help the family.
We all walked into the empty lobby of the House. Cheri went back to her office, and I sat down in one of the lobby chairs with Teigh and Belle. We were the only ones in the lobby other than the night security guy, so we sat down and relaxed, waiting for Cheri to finish up.
Within about ten minutes, we had six young male residents—patients and siblings—join us in the lobby to hang out with Teigh and Belle. It was like some kind of phone chain had happened: “dogs in the House, pass it on.”
There was not a parent in sight, and the kids technically are supposed to have an adult with them at all times, but it was a great moment. I took a picture of all of them with Teigh and Belle, and I called it “Bad Boys of the Ronald McDonald House.” It reminded me of that public service ad: “It’s 11 o’clock, do you know where your children are?”
It is a home away from home, after all.
Remember the “pay attention” admonition from earlier in the book? I had a chance to find out what I was learning from the dogs with one of my kids at the House. A young girl named Eden was in town from California and had immediately checked into Memorial Sloan-Kettering for some tests. Cheri had met the family, and they had talked about dogs and the dog show together. Eden asked Cheri to invite me to MSK to visit with her.
Eden was in the pediatrics unit at MSK, and dogs were not allowed there. Cheri assured me, “That’s OK. They just want to talk about dogs. Bring some pictures, books, and a DVD, and they will keep you going for a while.”
So off I went. I felt like I was missing something when I walked in the door—I kept looking down for the end of the leash. But we had a great visit, talking about Pugs for quite a while because Eden wanted to get one once she got healthy. I was there for over an hour with Eden and her mother, both of them sweethearts battling for Eden’s survival.
I think that the visit worked out so well because I kept thinking, “What would Teigh and Belle do?” I thought about those wristbands that many people wear with “WWJD” printed on them, standing for “What Would Jesus Do?” Not to compare the dogs to Jesus, of course, but for this, my dogs were my inspiration.
I’m glad that I‘ve been paying attention to them because it helped me help Eden.
Eventually, Eden got out of the hospital and came over to the House, where she got to spend up-close-and-personal time with Teigh and Belle.
In the moment.
I remind myself of this constantly. I know which children are facing the toughest battles at the time; I can see the difference in them physically from week to week. I have seen kids on a Tuesday night and attended their memorial services on Friday.
These are very special kids. They smile through unimaginable pain. Their courage and their worldli
ness are amazing.
“How do you do it?” I hear this a lot. Not as much as Cheri hears it, but just about any time I share a story with someone about our visits. “Isn’t it tough?”
Yes, it is tough. But it’s not as tough on me as it is on the kids or the parents.
I am there for them with Teigh or Belle or Angel or Grace—there to provide some respite in their battle, there to lend some kind of normalcy to their frantic lives. But I am just the guy on the end of the leash. It’s the dogs that are doing the work. If you ask Richard, who brings Tucker; Gay, who brings Mr. Gruffyd Babayan; Barbara, who brings Lille; Caroline, who brings Beau; Maria, who brings Ella; Nicole, who brings Lucy; Kristina, who brings Lilly; or any of the others, they will all give the same answer. We aren’t doing it for ourselves.
I am biased, of course, but Ronald McDonald House is a wonderful place to be a volunteer. A wonderful, heartwarming, heartbreaking place, where doing something good for someone in need happens in the moment, one moment at a time.
Champion Champions
In January of 1990, Westminster Kennel Club President Chet Collier asked me if I would be interested in doing the television commentary for the world’s greatest dog show (my words) coming up in February. One of my Afghan Hounds was coming off a great year in the show ring, so I had met Chet on several occasions around the country at shows. He told me that they were looking for a new color commentator for the telecast, and someone had thrown my name into the mix because I had previously worked in PR for the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers as well as for ABC Sports as a publicist for Monday Night Football.
I had been in the right place at the right time—several times. I was working with the Broncos when they went to their first Super Bowl ever; I was working with the 49ers when they traded for O.J. Simpson; and Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, and Frank Gifford was already a huge part of the American sports culture when I started working with ABC Sports. I had been interviewed on camera a few times in those jobs, but I had never been a host or the “talent.”
It really helped that I had been around the media madness that had surrounded the Broncos, O.J., and the Monday Night guys, and while all of that was not quite the same as standing in front of the camera, I accepted Chet’s invitation to audition for Westminster. I was living in Seattle at the time, so he flew me to Boston, where he had a television production company. We did an audition tape with Chet playing the host to my color commentator, and we did our make-believe commentary over the tape of the Hound Group from the previous year’s Westminster show.
He called the next day and offered me the job. I remember thinking to myself that this might be fun and that maybe I could make it last a couple of years.
Chet was the genius behind the television success of Westminster, thanks to his understanding of the world of television and the world of dog shows. Over the next few weeks, Chet and I talked about the show. I wanted his perspective, of course, and I felt the pressure of representing Westminster and our world of purebred dogs and dog shows to the general public, as Westminster was the show that everyone watched. I wanted Chet to be happy with my approach and my work.
Chet would often say, “It’s important to remember that 99 percent of our television audience has never been to a dog show and probably will never go to a dog show.” He also was resolute about Westminster’s role in promoting and protecting the purebred dog in particular and responsible dog ownership in general, and why not? Westminster Kennel Club is, after all, the oldest organization in America dedicated to the sport of purebred dogs.
So with Chet’s guidance, I made it my objective to talk about the real dogs and real people in our great family sport of showing dogs. It was important for the credibility of our messages that people understood that the same dogs they were seeing in the show ring are beloved family pets. These dogs don’t spend their days between shows sitting around on doggy cushions eating doggy bonbons; they are real dogs that chew up our shoes, sleep on our couches, bark at the mailman, steal food off our counters, and shed on our clothes. I wanted everyone to realize that Westminster is a celebration of the world’s greatest show dogs, but it is also a celebration of the dogs in our lives.
I gave all of the owners of the Best of Breed winners a TV information card to fill out so I would have something interesting to say about them on the telecast when they appeared in their Groups that evening. I asked them to tell me about more than their dogs’ twenty-seven Group wins and nine Bests in Show; I asked them to tell me stories about what their dogs do at home or elsewhere.
I’ve gotten a lot of great stories on these cards over the years in a lot of categories:
Funny:
• A dog’s favorite thing to do each day was to go through the drive-through at Dunkin’ Donuts for donut holes
• A dog named Rembrandt was one of a litter of five, all named for toothpastes by their retired dentist owner
• A Dachshund accompanied his famous archaeologist owner on excavations; she said that he was an excellent digger but never kept notes and tended to mix up the bones
Near-tragic:
• One winner survived ingesting 176 allergy pills
• Another survived an airline mishap in which two of his littermates were killed
• Another winner survived being “misplaced” by the airline for eight hours en route to New York
• Others survived vehicle rollovers and crashes, emergency surgeries, and getting hit by a car
Please say “hi” to:
• Wives at home expecting to give birth any day
• The parishioners of an owner-handler who is a priest and knew he would have to answer to them for missing Mass on the Sunday before Westminster
• A handler’s two daughters, who were both in the hospital about to deliver new grandchildren for her
Congratulations:
• To a handler, a mother of eight, who had just graduated from college. My question: “She had time to study?”
Hero awards (all dogs who won their Breeds at Westminster):
• To the dog who absorbed a shotgun blast and saved his owner’s son
• To the dog who foiled an attempted armed robbery at his owner’s veterinary clinic
• To the dog who saved his handler’s husband from a house fire
I also found out how some of the winning dogs spent their time when not in the show ring. They had been part of print and television ad campaigns, in magazine articles (even as a “centerfold”), in MTV music videos, on Animal Planet’s Breed All About It, in plays and operas, on Hollywood Squares, in movies, on Oprah, on the Today Show—and the list goes on.
Eventually, people began sharing stories about their dogs visiting children in schools, seniors in nursing homes, and patients in health care facilities. When these stories were told on television, they begat more stories. I wondered if the dogs had been doing these things all along, or if some of the owners heard that such stories made for good TV and subsequently got their dogs involved in these kinds of activities. However it happened, having a non-dog-show story about your show dog suddenly became a big deal, and people loved sharing those stories. Even better, therapy dogs started showing up everywhere. Even in the Best in Show ring.
The winners of Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show instantly become the world’s newest single-name celebrities. That gets confirmed many times on the day after the show with appearances on NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s Early Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, and many other programs. There are photo opportunities at the Empire State Building, at Sardi’s, and with Donald Trump. People holler at the dog (“Rufus, you can come to work with us any time,” yelled a hard-hat construction worker in 2006); they come running over to take cell-phone pictures or call friends and family (“Mom, you’ll never guess who I am standing with!”); they cheer as the dog passes by.
As great as they were as show dogs, some of the Westminster Best in Show winners had a
n even greater impact as therapy dogs. Some of them were officially registered and making regular visits. Others got a paw in the door due to their celebrity status and performed admirably in limited exposure. After all, show dogs are accustomed to strangers (judges and others) putting their hands on them and working in close quarters, and sometimes that makes the transition to being a therapy dog a little easier than it might be for non-show dogs.
In 2006, the Colored Bull Terrier Ch. Rocky Top’s Sundance Kid capped a great show career by going Best in Show at Westminster. “Rufus” had previously won many Bests, but notably he captured BIS at two big shows in the fall of 2005—the Morris & Essex Dog Show and the National Dog Show presented by Purina—in a career that saw him become the top-winning Bull Terrier of all time.
Rufus became the hardest working dog in show business over the next few years, serving as a Therapy Dog Ambassador for the National Dog Show on NBC, doing appearances for Angel On A Leash, winning an American Kennel Club ACE (Award for Canine Excellence) in the therapy dog category, and helping to raise money for Bull Terrier rescue. All of this was in addition to his volunteer work with his just-as-hardworking owners, Barbara and Tom Bishop, visiting children’s hospitals, schools, wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and many other people and places.
Rufus has his own Facebook page, on which his education is listed as follows: “Studied Therapy Dog at Westminster Kennel Club School of Best in Show Winners.”
I was doing an interview once about Rufus, and I was asked if Rufus was in a class by himself because of all of the therapy dog work that he was doing. I gave the writer a great quote from Houston Oilers football coach Bum Phillips when he had been asked years ago about his star running back, Earl Campbell: “I don’t know if he’s in a class by himself, but whatever class he’s in, it doesn’t take long to take roll.”