When I checked my email this morning there were a few requests for me to alert readers to a heart-warming story about Chancer, a handsome golden retriever, and a young boy, Iyal, to whom he provides much needed care and love. You can read the entire story of devotion and love when you have time, as it is a wonderful and inspiring tale, but for how these brief passages should whet your appetite for more.
The morning after Chancer's first night in the house outside Atlanta, the Winokurs woke up after a full night's sleep for almost the first time since 1999. They looked at each other in semihorror: was Iyal still alive? They found him snoozing beside the big yellow dog, the latter hogging the mattress. Since Chancer's arrival in the house, they've rarely been disturbed in the night. Iyal may still wake up, but he's evidently reassured by the dog's presence and returns to sleep.
The moment he walked in the house with Chancer, I knew something had changed," Harvey says. "I could feel it instantly, the magnetism between Iyal and the dog. . . . Chancer was an emotional and physical anchor for a kid who was pretty lost in the world."
When Iyal is distressed, Chancer is distressed. Unlike Iyal, Chancer knows what to do about it. Iyal rages by crossing his arms, sitting down hard on the floor and screaming and kicking. Chancer unknots the crossed arms by inserting his wide muzzle through the locked arms from below, opening them up and nuzzling toward Iyal's face, licking and slobbering, until the boy's screams turn to tears of remorse or to laughter.
Chancer sometimes heads off tantrums before they start. If a tutor or a therapist has worked with Iyal in the dining room a bit too long, Chancer moves between the visitor and the boy, clearly relaying: We're done for today. From two floors away, he will alert, flicking his ears, tuning in. Sensing that Iyal is nearing a breaking point, he gallops up or down the stairs to find him, playfully head-butts and pushes him down to the floor, gets on top of him, stretches out and relaxes with a satisfied groan. Helplessly pinned under Chancer, Iyal resists, squawks and then relaxes, too. The big dog lies on top of the boy he loves, and seals him off from the dizzying and incomprehensible world for a while.
Chancer doesn't know that Iyal is cognitively impaired. What he knows is that Iyal is his boy. Chancer loves Iyal in a perfect way, with an unconditional love beyond what even the family can offer him. Chancer never feels disappointed in Iyal or embarrassed by Iyal. Beyond cognitive ability or disability, beyond predictions of a bright future or a dismal one, on a field of grass and hard-packed dirt, between the playground and the baseball diamond, you can see them sometimes, the two of them, running, laughing their heads off, sharing a moment of enormous happiness, just a boy and his dog.
I've worked with many service dogs and everytime I meet these amazing dog beings and their human companions I'm moved beyond belief, often to tears, at the close relationship that develops and how reciprocal it can be. When I teach a course on animal behavior and the emotional lives of animals at the Bergin University of Canine Studies in Santa Rosa, California, for example, I meet students and staff who are dedicated to learning about animal behavior and how this information can be used to train service dogs. They are also keenly interested in how this knowledge can be used to enrich the dog's life while she or he is working to enrich the life of a human.
A dog and his human companion at Bergin University
I've also worked with the Psychiatric Service Dog Society (PSDS), founded by Joan Esnayra. A few summers ago I gave my lecture on the emotional lives of animals and met a group of wonderful veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their dog buddies. The bond between them was incredibly strong and each human, most of whom were suffering from PTSD and a wide variety of physical injuries, wanted to know how they could make the life of their dog better to pay them back for their unyielding care, devotion, and love. Driving home that afternoon I couldn't wait to share my experience with as many people as possible.
Dogs are amazing beings who deserve our unyielding care, devotion, and love. The examples above in which dogs are the life line, the oxygen, for people in need, are but a very few in which the tight and enduring bond is good for all involved. It's truly a win-win situation, and bless all the dog beings and human beings who work in these wonderful programs.
