Pearl had a chance to shine again when the devastating tsunami hit Japan in March 2011. Working in snow and rain, and in temperatures that never rose above the 50s, was physically and emotionally grueling. “We came across a lot of people, but we didn’t find any life,” Horetski says quietly. But Pearl never displayed signs of depression. “This is a working dog, doing her work,” he explains.
At home, the pair’s lives are simpler. Horetski plans to eventually retire from the fire department, but for now there are still biweekly training sessions in rubble and in abandoned buildings, local search-and-rescue missions, and long days at the firehouse. Pearl accompanies her handler 24/7, as part of the program’s guidelines, and has no shortage of affection for her many fans—although Horetski is not one of those fawning over her. “She’s a work dog, so she’s not on my lap watching TV at night,” he says. “And we don’t go to the dog run to play, because she needs to be ready and have the energy for an emergency. But she’s so much more … She’s my partner.”
Pearl with her handler, Captain Ron Horetski (illustration credit 20.3)
A HISTORY OF HELPING St. Bernards were the first dogs used for search-and-rescue work. The monks at Great St. Bernard Hospice, situated in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland, acquired St. Bernards sometime between 1660 and 1670. The dogs searched for snow-buried travelers and provided warmth to injured people.
Chaser
MASTERING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BORDER COLLIE SOUTH CAROLINA
Most dog owners suspect their pets are geniuses. But some dogs, it must be admitted, have a tad more genius than the rest. Consider Chaser, a border collie who belongs to Professor Emeritus John W. Pilley, of Wofford College. Thanks to intensive training by Pilley, who has a Ph.D. in animal learning, Chaser has learned to comprehend more than a thousand proper nouns. When asked, not only will she pick a specific object out from many, she will perform the requested action with the object, such as pawing it, licking it, or taking it.
As a professor, Pilley spent years trying to teach dogs language, and had failed. “I remember before I got her, I was sitting around a campfire with farmers who had border collies and I said, ‘Your dogs don’t really know their names. When you use their name, all they know is to look at you and come to you.’ The farmers looked at me like the idiot Ph.D. professor that I was. The fact is, I just hadn’t been successful in teaching the [dogs] yet.”
When Pilley read a study about a border collie in Germany who had learned to recognize more than 300 items by name, he was determined to try again with his own border collie. The breed is known for intelligence and the drive to work. This time, he decided, he would raise the puppy using a technique that involved continually repeating the name of an object. Chaser began training up to five hours a day when she was only eight weeks old, and by the time she was six months old, says Pilley, “she was learning names of objects so rapidly we suspected she was learning a name in one five-minute trial.” Within three years, her ability to associate a name with an object included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees, and a plethora of plastic items.
Chaser, a border collie, has learned more than 1,000 words, including the names of her toys. (illustration credit 21.1)
BORDER COLLIE
ORIGIN: Border between Scotland and England
COLOR(S): Typically black and white
HEIGHT: 18 to 22 inches
TEMPERAMENT: The border collie is a highly energetic dog, needing extensive exercise daily. Border collies are fiercely loyal family dogs and may be reserved with strangers.
“One of my trainers said, ‘If you give your heart to a dog, the dog will give her mind to you,’ ” says Pilley. “Dogs are smarter than we think they are, and dogs have a greater possibility for learning language than we realize. But it takes a good teacher to teach a dog, and we are still working on developing methods that enable us to teach them language.”
Pilley and Chaser have scaled back but still hold morning training sessions on the campus of the Spartanburg, South Carolina, college where Pilley taught for 30 years. Border collies, bred to herd sheep, have tremendous energy, and, says Pilley, “they will drive their owners crazy if they don’t have work to do. Training is all play for her. Everything is play for her. Sometimes,” he admits, “I go to sleep at 8 p.m., just to get a rest from her.”
HOW DID CHASER BECOME SO SMART? Dogs’ understanding of human language and communication probably comes from their long history of living and working with us. Scientists believe that dogs were domesticated some 14,000 years ago.
Despite being legally blind, Rachael Scdoris competes in the 2005 Iditarod with the help of her sled dog team. (illustration credit 22.1)
Dutchess
KEEPING HER EYES ON THE PRIZE MIXED BREED OREGON
Rachael Scdoris doesn’t have one favorite dog; she has a hundred. That’s how many dogs it takes for this sled dog racer (or musher) from Bend, Oregon, to train for the Iditarod—the annual 1,049-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, which she first entered in 2005. All mushers rely on their dogs for guidance, but Scdoris is more reliant than most. Born with a rare vision disorder that makes her nearsighted, farsighted, and colorblind, Scdoris was eight when she first articulated her dream of racing the Iditarod. “It was quite simple, really,” she remembers. The daughter of a sled dog trainer, “I grew up with sled dogs, and my parents always told me the sky’s the limit. But they did ask me how I was going to navigate the trail. I said, ‘We’ll have headsets.’ ”
Scdoris was racing dogs by the time she was 11, and in 2006, with a time of 12 days, 10 hours, and 42 minutes spent on the trail, she became the first blind athlete to finish the Iditarod. Throughout it, and all the races that followed, her dogs have been her inspiration.
“There’s something that is quite common in distance racing, when you are racing at night and start to think, ‘You should be sleeping now in a warm bed,’ but I can just look down at my team and see their tails wagging. I can’t help but be happy with them when I see how happy they are to be running.” And when Scdoris is in training and feels like taking a day off, “I do it for them,” she says. “I think, ‘I’ll give them a little something today.’ ”
Scdoris and her “soul dog,” Dutchess, who helped guide her on the trail (illustration credit 22.2)
“THE LAST GREAT RACE”
The Iditarod is a 1,049-mile-long race along the historic Iditarod Trail, starting in Anchorage and ending in Nome, Alaska.
Today, mushers participate with teams of 12 to 16 dogs. It takes racers 10 to 17 days to complete.
The Iditarod Trail had its beginnings as a mail and supply route, originally traveled by dogsled.
Although her dogs aren’t pets, Scdoris is unreserved in her love for them. During a race, she massages them at every stop; in addition to being kind, this helps her get a sense of how their muscles are holding up, since she can’t visually assess their physical condition. She has even been known to sing to them. “I take the best dogs on races,” she says. “There is a special bond with every dog, who all have their individual quirks. There’s one, Yoda, who most of the time doesn’t like me unless there is a potential to go for a ride in the dog truck or run. But they all trust me enough to hit the wall and keep running if I ask them. I never push them to a point where they are tired. In training, I never run them more than seven hours.”
Most of Scdoris’s dogs are what she calls “Alaskan Huskies,” which, she explains, are “technically northern mutts who love to run. It’s not a registered breed.” What does Scdoris look for in her dogs? “A combination of heart and athletic ability.”
The dog who perhaps best embodied these traits was Dutchess, whom Scdoris still calls “my great leader” even though she passed away in 2008. Dutchess accompanied Scdoris when she was a teenager on the 500-mile Wyoming Stage Stop, a race she describes as so long, “I was 15 when I started it and it ended when I was 16.”
“Dutchess had a mind of her own,” she says. �
�She’d look at me like, ‘I know you think this is where we should go.’ She wasn’t usually right,” she says with affection. “She got me into a lot of trouble, but she also got me out of a lot of trouble.” Dutchess died too young to enjoy what Scdoris’s other dogs do in retirement: moving into her house full-time with free rein over the couch and the opportunity to play ball in the warm confines of the living room. Still, she did share her owner’s bed when they traveled together. “Dutchess,” says Scdoris, “dazzled everybody.”
STAYING WARM IN THE ALASKA WILDERNESS Different breeds of dogs have different coats. Sled dogs have good fur with an undercoat and an overcoat. The undercoat serves to insulate the dogs from cold temperatures, and the overcoat discourages ice and snow from building up on their fur during windy and cold conditions.
Izzy gave her owner, Gabrielle Ford, the courage to speak out about her experience of being bullied. (illustration credit 23.1)
Izzy
THE GIFT OF COURAGE BLACK AND TAN COONHOUND FLORIDA
Gabrielle Ford calls Izzy her “second life.” That’s because in her adolescence, before the coonhound came into her life, Ford was so afraid of being bullied that she loathed being in public.
Ford was diagnosed at the age of 12 with a rare muscle disease, Friedreich’s ataxia; by the time she graduated from high school, her condition had advanced so much that she fell while crossing the stage to accept her diploma. When her fellow students made fun of her for the tumble, Ford confined herself to her family’s house and refused to leave. Then, at the age of 20, by now relying on a wheelchair, she asked her parents if she could have a dog to help assuage her loneliness.
“I said she could, but that she would be accountable in every way,” remembers Ford’s mother, Rhonda Kay Hillman. “I knew that even if it was just letting the dog in and out the back door, the movement would keep her muscles going.”
The excitement of getting Izzy, says Ford, was enough to shake her out of her long depression. “The month before she arrived, I went out to buy her all this stuff and I could feel myself coming out of my shell,” she remembers. “And when Izzy came home, it was like night and day. I wasn’t just taking care of her, I was now taking care of myself. I felt so comfortable with her. I could talk to her about anything, and she was my best friend and my confidante.”
Izzy and Gabrielle were best friends and constant companions. (illustration credit 23.2)
When Izzy was less than a year old, she was diagnosed with a liver condition that necessitated surgery. Two years later, she was also diagnosed with a rare muscular disease the symptoms of which mirrored her owner’s, including fatigue and a wobbly gait. “I was devastated,” remembers Ford, who now lives in Melbourne, Florida. “But then I decided to just let it play out.”
BLACK AND TAN COONHOUND
ORIGIN: U.S.A.
COLOR(S): Rich black with tan markings above the eyes; on the sides of the muzzle, and on the chest, legs, and rear end
HEIGHT: 23 to 27 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Outgoing, friendly, able to work with other dogs
The bond between Ford and Izzy, and the similarity between their diagnoses, caught the attention of Animal Planet, and with the resulting segment that chronicles their story —which has aired more than 80 times over five years—came requests for the young woman to speak in classrooms about her experience of being bullied. “I was absolutely panicked, and there’s no way I could have done it without Izzy,” says Ford. “What made it OK was that all the attention went to her, which took the focus off me and my wheelchair. Everyone just loved her. Here was a subject that wasn’t the most popular and might be hard to hear—but with Izzy there, people let their guards down and my message was able to get to their hearts. There’s something about an animal being there that makes people more vulnerable.”
Izzy defied the odds, living until she was almost ten years old, and Ford honors her by continuing to give antibullying talks across the country. “She wasn’t trained, and she did have some bad manners when she was around other dogs, but she was my sidekick,” says Ford. “As long as people hear my story she will [always] be alive, because she’s the reason I have my story. There’s the story of my being bullied—but the reason I was able to overcome my fears was because of her. She changed me. If it wasn’t for her, I would still be a fearful person hiding away in my house.”
DOGS STAND UP TO BULLIES. Mutt-i-grees, a program developed by Yale University and North Shore Animal League, uses some of the teachings of Cesar Millan and takes dogs in the classroom to teach children social and emotional skills, such as empathy, team building, and respect. The program has proved to be an effective tool in fighting bullying and is being introduced to more schools around the country.
Jarod, a chow chow, saved his owner and a canine companion from a brutal bear attack. (illustration credit 24.1)
Jarod
PROTECTING A FAMILY CHOW CHOW CANADA
Donna Perreault was accustomed to living in peace with her two chow chows—the breed is known to be fiercely protective—and the occasional bear who would amble across her land in Genelle, British Columbia. But one fall day as dusk fell, Perreault was on the phone with her son when she looked out the window and saw a dark figure moving toward her elderly female chow, Meesha, who was sleeping in the backyard. Suddenly, Meesha began barking wildly, and then the bear was on top of the dog, attacking her.
“The wind had been blowing all day, and I think because of that the bear couldn’t smell Meesha so he was startled when she barked,” says Perreault. Without a thought, she threw the phone down and raced outside to try to distract the bear, only to find that her male chow, Jarod, had pushed the door open and raced after her. “Suddenly, he was attacking the bear, who was attacking Meesha,” she remembers. “I had a mop bucket, so I picked it up and hit the bear on the butt, and that’s when the bear came after me. He backed me up against the garage. I then hit him with the mop but he kept coming at me. I whacked him on the nose and he stopped for a second and shook his head, and that’s when Jarod attacked him.”
CHOW CHOW
ORIGIN: China
COLOR(S): Red, black, blue, cinnamon, and cream
HEIGHT: 17 to 20 inches
TEMPERAMENT: Very loyal, intelligent, independent, naturally protective, reserved and discerning with strangers
Jarod went after the bear, forcing the animal to turn toward him and drawing the animal away from Perreault long enough for her and Meesha to race inside the house; Jarod followed shortly, with the bear nowhere in sight.
Remarkably, neither dog was seriously hurt—Meesha threw her back out—while Perreault suffered only puncture wounds to her hand from the bear clawing at her and a shallow wound in her chest that required some medical attention. (Perhaps the most frightened of all was Perreault’s son, who had been on the phone the entire time listening to his mother scream.) “I think the bear just got caught up in the whole mess with us,” says Perreault, who credits Jarod with saving her life as well as Meesha’s. “Jarod was so happy to know we were all fine. Now, when we go on walks, he never lets me out of his sight.”
Jarod (left), Donna Perreault, and Meesha (right) (illustration credit 24.2)
THE ORIGINAL TEDDY BEAR? Move over, Teddy Roosevelt. In the 1800s, England’s Queen Victoria had a pet chow chow who was her constant companion. One legend states that the queen’s dressmaker made a stuffed toy chow chow that some people thought looked like a bear. Other dressmakers followed suit, and the toys soon became known as teddy bears.
Picasso
KEEPING THE PACE PIT BULL NEW YORK
Anyone in their right mind who is participating in a long-distance run enlists a partner to keep him or her motivated and on pace during the grueling and endless hours of training. And sometimes, if the athlete’s very lucky, the partner will drag him or her up that final, seemingly insurmountable hill.
Picasso does that for George Gallego, who became paraplegic two decades ago. The former manager of th
e New York Times’s circulation department for the tri-state area, Gallego tripped on a cable that had carelessly been left on the floor at work and plummeted from a three-story height, landing on a concrete floor. “My spinal cord was instantly severed,” says Gallego, “and my life changed completely.”
Gallego went on to earn a master’s degree and professional certification in not-for-profit management. He then founded Wheels of Progress, a group dedicated to ensuring that thousands of young people currently living in senior nursing facilities because they have spinal cord injuries or other disabilities and their homes are no longer accessible have the chance to live in their own apartments again. He also began racing for the cause. And he found Picasso.
George Gallego and Picasso go for a run in Central Park in New York City. (illustration credit 25.1)
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