officer told The Arizona Republic in
2008. “You can’t lie to the dog when
she sits down in front of you, because
she smells gasoline on your hands.”
Service pets warn chronic seizure
sufferers of an oncoming attack with
a paw thump or a bark; animals can
sense chemical-odor changes that
humans cannot. In 2006 a three-year-
old Florida beagle named Belle saw
her owner collapse in a severe diabetic
seizure; Belle held down the 9 on the
phone with her teeth, as she’d been
trained to do. The phone automatically
dialed 911, and paramedics arrived in
time to save her owner.
But there’s more to the connection
than training. Four-year-old Charley,
a West Highland white terrier in Atlanta, is not a search-and-rescue dog.
In fact, when Charley made his lifesaving rescue last year, his owner wasn’t
even aware that anyone needed help.
One August day the little dog began urgently pacing and barking to be let out
of the house. Owner Frances Gippert
clicked Charley’s leash onto his collar
and opened the front door. He dragged
her away from their usual route and
toward a yard three doors away, where
Roy Monie lay semiconscious and
badly bruised. Monie had fallen off a
ladder and had suffered a brain hemorrhage. If Charley hadn’t found him—no
one knows how—so that Gippert could
call 911, Monie likely would have died.
Since then, Monie and his family have
embraced Gippert, who had lost both
parents and her sister to cancer. Last
year they all celebrated Christmas together. “This whole process has been
very emotionally moving for me,” says
Gippert, who was working from home
after a difficult divorce. “It has changed
my life. I just wanted to stay in my
house, me and Charley,” she says. “Roy
didn’t let that happen.”
DESPITE BEING SHAKY from his injuries, Lex, the Marine dog, made it to
Corporal Dustin Lee’s funeral. He and
Dustin’s younger brother, Camryn,
then 13, even played together for a
while (the Lees also have a daughter,
Madyson). Several top Marine Corps
officers attended (CONTINUED ON PAGE 86)
