The puggle is a mix of a pug and a beagle, bred in the 1980s as a companion dog. Puggles are known to have an exceptionally keen sense of smell.
Still, nothing prepared the couple for Wendy’s ingenuity the afternoon when Richard was working at the computer and suddenly found himself on the floor. As he later learned, he had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. “I remember Wendy trying to drag me into the living room, and somehow I got up into my chair there,” he says. “That’s when she brought me the telephone.” Wendy is trained to fetch the phone, but only when asked, and what happened next was something her trainer says she never could have taught her: When Wendy saw that Richard couldn’t dial with the hand she had placed the telephone in, she moved it to the other hand so he could call his wife.
Wendy’s attention to Richard isn’t just about duty, but about an inexplicable bond. Elaine rushed her husband to the hospital, “but I made a mistake and left Wendy at home. When I came back two hours later, she was in a panic, so I got her in the car and drove her to the hospital. I didn’t direct or lead her, but she sniffed his scent through the ER and led us directly to his bed, where she lay down.” All the more extraordinary: The room was empty, as Richard had been taken to another floor for tests. “If I hadn’t seen it,” says Elaine, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Wendy and Heath enjoy a day at the Dallas Arboretum. (illustration credit 11.2)
Elaine says that although her husband and Wendy are together around the clock, she never feels left out. “Richard is definitely her ‘master,’ but she is very devoted to me,” she says. “She’s just a part of us. This is now a marriage of three.”
SENSORY OVERLOAD Scientists think that a dog can distinguish smells 1,000 to 10,000 times better than a human. A dog gets most of its information from the scents it picks up. The area of the brain that identifies scents is 40 percent larger in dogs than it is in people.
Sonntag and friend Richard Olsenius in Alaska (illustration credit 12.1)
Sonntag
CALL OF THE WILD GERMAN SHEPHERD WASHINGTON, D.C.
It was a scorching summer in Washington, D.C., when Ed Mulrenin, an attorney, decided that he and his dog Sonntag should get out of town. Far, far out of town. “ ‘We’re going to Alaska!’ Mulrenin remembers telling his canine best friend as he planned their six-week, 12,500-mile round-trip.
But this adventure was more complicated than just throwing a couple of bags, a tent, and dog bowls in the car. The then 13-year-old German shepherd was paraplegic, suffering from a disc injury that had caused his paralysis two years earlier. Even though the dog had a custom-made cart that allowed him to be mobile, Mulrenin estimates that simply caring for Sonntag in the comfort of his home required at least three hours a day of dedicated care.
Despite the challenge, Mulrenin was fully committed. When he was offered his dream job, which would have meant moving to Russia without his dog, he turned it down. Euthanizing Sonntag was never an option—“I’m not putting a dog down just because he can’t walk,” says Mulrenin—but he recognized that both man and dog could use some fun. “I needed a goal to keep his spirit up. If you lose the dog’s spirit, you lose the dog.”
GERMAN SHEPHERD
ORIGIN: Germany
COLOR(S): Varies in color; strongly defined colors are preferable.
HEIGHT: 22 to 26 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Fearless, intelligent, and eager to learn. Their loyalty, faithfulness, and courage make them good military or police dogs.
So the veteran campers headed off on an adventure into the wilderness: one at the wheel of the Land Rover, the other copiloting beside him in a custom-made bed. Although there were some hard times, including inclement weather and rocky terrain, Mulrenin says it was a trip of a lifetime. “I remember driving into Denali National Park and all of a sudden Sonntag sparked up and pushed himself up on his front legs. It was like, ‘Wow! The wilderness!’ I remember that look on his face, like he was coming home. We were inseparable,” he continues, “and I bonded with a dog in a way I had never thought imaginable.”
Five months after the pair returned to Washington, the mobility of Sonntag’s front legs began to falter, and Mulrenin called the veterinarian and made the difficult decision to put down his soul mate. Mulrenin says he has no regrets about the sacrifices he made for his beloved companion. “It was the first time in my life that I realized that I had actually been living under the principle do what is right no matter what the consequences to me. Those words are now permanently impressed on my mind and guide every important decision I make.”
ON THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had a canine companion on their Corps of Discovery expedition. Lewis most likely purchased his dog, Seaman, a Newfoundland breed, from a friend in Philadelphia for $20. Seaman proved useful in alerting the explorers to roaming buffalo or bears after dark.
Brock
FLYING TO THE RESCUE DOBERMAN PINSCHER SOUTH CAROLINA
Debi Boies, a founding member of the rescue group Doberman Assistance Network, had recently lost her 12-year-old Doberman and was looking to welcome another dog to her South Carolina horse farm. The dog had to have a gentle disposition and be able to get along with other animals, and when Boies heard about Brock, a young, scrawny Doberman, she knew he was the one. Used as a sparring partner for fighting dogs, Brock had had his teeth filed down so that when he was attacked he couldn’t fight back. Despite this mistreatment, the person fostering him “said he was kind, not aggressive with other animals, and only needed time to come out of his shell. I said, ‘OK, we’ll give it a try,’ ” remembers Boies. The only hitch: Brock was in Tampa, Florida.
Boies called friends to see if anyone would drive Brock to South Carolina. One friend, Jon Wehrenberg, responded with an even better offer: He’d pick Brock up with his private plane. “He said, ‘Pilots love to fly, and we’re always looking for an excuse,’ ” Boies remembers.
With Brock safely delivered to his new home, Wehrenberg asked Boies how she had spent years rescuing Dobermans without access to pilots. Boies acknowledged that ground transport is hard on dogs, and the logistics are exceedingly complicated. “Jon said, ‘We need to do something.’ I said, ‘I know the rescue side, you know aviation,’ and off we went. We had no idea what we were doing, but that was the beginning of Pilots N Paws.”
Brock, a Doberman pinscher, enjoys his new life with Debi Boies on her farm in South Carolina. (illustration credit 13.1)
DOBERMAN PINSCHER
ORIGIN: unknown, possibly in Germany around 1900. The name came from a tax collector in Apolda, Louis Dobermann.
COLOR(S): Black, red, blue, and fawn
HEIGHT: 24 to 28 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Energetic, watchful, determined, alert, fearless, loyal, and obedient
Pilots N Paws now has an online community where rescuers communicate directly with the more than 3,000 participating pilots. The group has flown about 14,000 animals, including a Steppe eagle (a special request from a group of Navy SEALs), snakes, potbellied pigs, and even chickens between their rescue site and their forever homes. Nick O’Connell, a Pilots N Paws pilot and vice president of the board, says being able to unite the passion for flying with service is nothing less than addictive.
“The first flight I did were two chow puppies rescued from a dump. The adopters were at the airport, and everyone was so happy and crying, and I thought, ‘I can’t wait to do this again.’ ” The personal cost—about $100 an hour for fuel for his plane—“ain’t cheap,” he admits. “But you’ll scrape together the money to do it.”
Now a nonprofit so pilots can deduct some expenses, Pilots N Paws is an accomplishment for which Boies constantly thanks Brock, who has become a profusely affectionate companion. “I’m so grateful to him,” she says. “The hell he went through, and the place he came from, but here is a dog who has unknowingly saved thousands upon thousands of lives.”
SAVING THE LIVES OF OUR FURRY COMPANIONS. According t
o the Humane Society of the United States, 30 years ago the euthanasia rate of dogs and cats in relation to the number of dogs and cats kept as pets was around 25 percent. Today, the euthanasia rate has dramatically decreased to about 3 percent.
Chancer, a golden retriever, and Iyal have a special bond. (illustration credit 14.1)
Chancer
A LESSON IN LOYALTY GOLDEN RETRIEVER GEORGIA
The joy a dog found in comforting a boy has transformed the Winokur family, whose adopted son, Iyal, displays symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). With damage to his brain impacting his behavior, the teenager’s rages, delayed emotional growth, and sleepless nights were undoing a family exhausted by nearly a decade of round-the-clock care. Desperate, Iyal’s mother, Donnie Winokur, began investigating dogs trained to work with autistic children, who can present challenges like those of children with FAS, and decided to take a leap of faith. Soon, the family became the owners of the first certified assistance dog trained for someone living with FAS.
Within two weeks after Iyal was paired with Chancer, a golden retriever, the family’s lives were transformed. On their first night together, Chancer saw Iyal in a hotel hot tub and took a racing leap into the water, determined to save the boy he thought was drowning. “Somehow he knew that Iyal was his boy, and he had rescued him,” says Winokur. “I don’t know how he knew, but he did.” On Chancer’s first night in the Winokurs’ home, he crawled into Iyal’s bed to sleep beside him; for the first time, after years of nocturnal disruption, the entire family slept until the sun came up.
STUPENDOUS SENSES
Dogs can see color, but their sense of color is much duller than ours.
Our furry friends can hear sounds almost twice as well as humans and use fifteen different muscles to move their ears.
Selected in part for his great self-confidence, Chancer isn’t put off by Iyal’s rages. Instead, when the anger begins to build, he burrows close, butting open Iyal’s tightening arms until he can nestle in and soothe him. “The rages don’t escalate the way they used to, and they don’t last as long,” says Winokur. “Sometimes when he [Iyal] gets upset, he hand-claps—but now he can do it into Chancer’s fur, and that will calm Iyal in a sensory way. Somehow, Chancer has learned it’s one of his jobs.”
Chancer has also learned to sense when Iyal’s temper escalates even if he’s as much as two floors away from Iyal. “Somehow he will pick up on it and go to Iyal wherever he is and just hang there with him,” says Winokur. This isn’t surprising to Julie Hecht of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. Hecht points to dogs’ extraordinary auditory abilities, explaining that Chancer would be able to hear Iyal begin to mutter—how his rages often present themselves—even at a great distance. What Hecht finds unusual is Chancer’s motivation to comfort Iyal and his enthusiasm in doing so. “This is a dog who is very attentive and enjoys doing his job,” she says. “And most important, he really enjoys his relationship with Iyal.”
Chancer also makes it easier for the family to enjoy their relationships with the teenager. “I have a child with a severe disability but a huge, kind heart and soul—and it’s about making sure we have access to that heart and soul,” says Winokur. And there are newfound moments of peace. “Now, if Iyal drops to the floor and starts writhing I can say, ‘Go find Chancer,’ and he will put his head on him and Chancer absorbs a lot of that energy. Before Chancer, it was impossible to have two minutes of nothingness. Now we can.”
Chancer is the first service-trained dog for people living with FAS. (illustration credit 14.2)
Chancer is beloved by all members of the family—Winokur and Morasha, Iyal’s sister, have written children’s books about him—and Winokur credits him with helping her spiritually and emotionally. “We were just so raw after all these years, because it requires so much understanding of the invisible chaos that goes on with Iyal,” she says. “But he enlightens me about interspecies connections.” Still, Chancer does have his flaws. “He gets overexcited and will hump the furniture,” says Winokur with a laugh. “And he’s a counter cruiser who will eat absolutely anything you leave out. No matter how extraordinary he is, you can’t take the dog out of the service dog.”
THE BENEFITS OF A SERVICE DOG Service dogs can provide great support to children born with FAS. Service dogs have been shown to improve self-confidence and independence as well as both abstract and concrete thinking. They can also help to sharpen the child’s focus and increase his or her attention span.
Willow, a mixed breed, not only knows 250 verbal and visual commands she also knows how to read. (illustration credit 15.1)
Willow
FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING MIXED BREED NEW YORK
Once your dog has conquered horseback riding and skateboarding, and learned upwards of 250 visual and verbal commands, why not teach her how to read? “It was either that or learning how to make a martini,” jokes Lyssa Howells, who was looking to teach her gifted dog, a little brown, black, and white terrier mix named Willow, some new tricks.
Spurred on by a bet with a friend, Howells wrote three commands on separate pieces of paper—“Sit Up,” “Wave,” and “Bang” (in response, Willow rolls over on her back as if she’s been shot)—and used food rewards to teach Willow to do what each written cue asked of her, in a matter of six weeks. “It’s repetition, just like anything,” says Howells, who is a dog trainer. “She learned to understand that particular order of letters, whether they were handwritten or typed. What she’s recognizing is the meaning of a pattern of pictures, which is really what reading is.”
Howells also trained Willow to recognize the quantities of “more” or “less”: When asked to point to the hand in which Howells holds a larger or smaller quantity of something, she is unerring whether Howells holds peas, carrots, or cookies. Howells has trained other dogs to do the same by teaching them to recognize the difference between an empty hand and a hand full of treats. “She’s just really brilliant,” says Howells. “She will put her paw on her food bowl when she is hungry. I can ask her to go into certain rooms and get me specific items, like, ‘Can you please go to the kitchen and grab me a pen?’ and she will.”
TRICKS OR TREATS
The first dog ever to walk the tightrope was an American Eskimo named Stout’s Pal Pierre, in the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Jesse, a Jack Russell terrier, is a YouTube star who demonstrates helpful tricks like pushing a shopping cart, putting away his toys, answering the telephone, and even working out!
Uggie, a Jack Russell terrier, performed tricks like “speaking,” walking on two legs, bowing, playing dead, and acting bashful in the hit movies The Artist and Water for Elephants.
Howells takes her best friend with her everywhere, including to training sessions with other dogs, where she uses Willow as an intentional distraction for the dogs she’s teaching to sit and stay. “I’ll be teaching a dog a command and Willow will be doing it at the same time,” says Howells. “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to teach her is how not to listen to me.”
Willow can read basic commands like “sit” and “wave.” (illustration credit 15.2)
HOW MUCH LANGUAGE CAN DOGS UNDERSTAND? Dogs understand humans better than we may think, even though they are unrelated to us. During the domestication process, the dog’s brain adapted to become more attuned to humans and their signals.
Henry
THE ART OF THE SAVE LABRADOR RETRIEVER TENNESSEE
Henry has spent a decade expressing his adoration for his master, Frank Walker. The chocolate Lab always sits beside Walker in his truck or in the golf cart he uses to get around his Tennessee property; he sleeps at the foot of the bed, and he even taught himself how to alert Walker to the seizures from which he occasionally suffers. Several minutes before a seizure happens, “he’ll nudge me or bark to get my attention to make sure I know and can get to a safe place,” says Walker. But Henry’s stalwart devotion shone through the day he saved Walker’s life.
On a warm F
ebruary day, Walker decided to cut down a dead tree behind his house. This was yard work he had often done before on his property. This time, however, the tree fell toward him, and Walker was pinned to the ground. “I had my cell phone, but my coat was five feet away with the phone in it,” he remembers. “I couldn’t move, and I knew I had cracked ribs. My arm and legs were twisted like a pretzel.”
For three hours Walker lay there, bleeding from internal injuries and growing weaker by the minute. Henry stayed by his side, helping keep him alert and warm. “I was doing a lot of praying and thinking about ways I was going to survive,” says Walker. Then, his dog—who had been trained never to leave the property on his own—made a life-saving run for it. “I had a new neighbor who I had met the month before,” says Walker. “I introduced him to the dog in my truck and said, ‘If you see him without me, you’ll know something is wrong.’ ” When the neighbor came into sight, Henry began barking wildly; when the neighbor didn’t respond, Henry raced for the man, bringing him back to Walker’s side.
Henry and his owner, Frank Walker (illustration credit 16.1)
LABRADOR RETRIEVER
LIFE EXPECTANCY: About 10 to 12 years
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