Dogs Come to the Rescue
Posted by Anne Corke on 2008-07-28. Filed under Monthly Feature
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Oregonian
The news reports said it was like a scene from "Lassie" when Annie, a miniature dachshund from Lake Oswego, saved her owner last month. Pam Fisher had fallen, and Annie barked -- and barked and barked -- until someone called the police, complaining about the noise. When police arrived, Annie kept barking, and eventually they heard Fisher's calls for help.
Talk with dog people for long, and you'll hear many stories of pets who saved the lives of their owners.
Such as Sarafina, a border collie mix therapy dog who works with Portland child psychologist Kali Miller.
Miller and Sarafina were driving through a deserted stretch of Wyoming on a snowy night. Miller decided to stop at a rest area. She's a savvy person, so she checked around the area carefully before getting out of the car. The parking lot was deserted. It had been snowing, and there were no footprints in the area. She decided it was safe to let her dog off leash, and Sarafina went off to stretch her legs.
Suddenly, Sarafina turned and raced toward her. Miller turned her head. "I saw this huge man behind me. He had his hand up to grab me."
Sarafina ran between them, slashing her big teeth toward the man. "Her saliva flew across his throat. This was the clearest warning there could be," remembers Miller.
Still the man didn't leave.
Sarafina gathered herself. Her expression, says Miller, got even fiercer. "I thought, 'She's going to kill him.' "
The man must have come to the same conclusion. Miller says he mumbled, "I'm sorry," and ran into the woods. He revved up his truck, which he'd hidden behind some trees, and sped off.
Fifteen years later, Sarafina is still working with kids, a gentle soul who never shows the look of a dog who was ready to defend the person she adores with her life.
What makes dogs like Annie and Sarafina spring to action when the chips are down, and how do they know what to do?
Much of the answer, says veterinarian Michael W. Fox, author of the new book "Dog Body, Dog Mind: Exploring Your Dog's Consciousness and Total Well-Being" (The Lyons Press, $24.95, 256 pages) is that dogs have a better sense of empathy than do their human counterparts.
"Dogs are highly evolved in their emotional intelligence. Empathy is the basis for human altruism. It's also the basis for altruistic behavior you see in dogs," he says. "The power of the wolf is the strength of the pack."
Natural selection rewarded wolves that cared for each other. Fox says one researcher documented pack members bringing food to an injured alpha wolf while he recovered.
Alex, a very old springer spaniel, was another hero.
Chuck Beck and his wife, Linda, decided to take the dog on a fishing trip on the Columbia River. Chuck was in the boat some distance from the shore, and Linda went to grab a rope.
She fell into the water. "She didn't know how to swim. She went down three times," explains Chuck's sister Vicky Ballow of Portland. Chuck was too far away to get to his wife on time.
Not to worry.
Alex jumped into the river, grabbed Linda by her pony tail, and pulled her out of the water. The old dog died a month later.
Marylee Nitschke, an animal behaviorist and Linfield psychology professor, did her doctoral dissertation on the response humans have to animal distress calls. Humans respond to distress calls from all sorts of creatures, from kittens to komodo dragons.
Alex probably responded to the drowning woman's distress calls just the same way a person would -- and he chose to help despite his old age and failing health.
But Faith, a service dog who lives in Richland, Wash., tops them all.
Of course, this Rottweiler is highly trained. She knows more than 150 commands to help make life safer and more convenient for her disabled owner. Faith was trained to push a special button on the phone for 9-1-1 to call for help when she was told to. She knew how to open doors on command.
On Sept. 7, 2004, Faith's owner, Leana Beasley, had a toxic reaction to medication and had grand mal seizures. She couldn't tell her dog what to do.
Faith had to make the decisions on her own.
She pushed the special 9-1-1 button and barked into the phone. Returning to her owner, Faith used her seizure response training to roll Beasley into a recovery position. Faith unlocked the door when the police arrived and led them to her owner.
It was the magical confluence of training, empathy and intelligence that allowed Faith to take these complicated series of steps to save her owner's life, says Jeanne Hampl, who has trained service dogs for more than 20 years and is the founder of the Assistance Dog Club of Puget Sound.
"When we train service dogs it's all cued behavior," explains Hampl. "We teach the dog to dial 9-1-1 (on phones that aren't hooked up). Then we practice doing it giving verbal cues."
Over time, the trainer will add falling to the floor and giving the "Call 9-1-1" cue. Then the trainer will fall over and not say anything, and the dog will be rewarded for "calling" 9-1-1.
The hope is that when the real emergency happens, a dog like Faith will make the decision that a situation looks like the one it's trained for, and will make the call.
But the dog has to make that decision. "That's the part that makes this a wonderful story. Faith took the next step," says Hampl.
How a dog responds depends in part on the genetics and personality of the individual dog.
Dachshunds like Annie were originally bred to corner badgers and bark to alert the hunter to come. It's not a long stretch for this dog to bark for help when her owner was injured.
And sometimes your choice of a dog might put your rescue in trouble.
Take the case of the veterinarian who told me about getting robbed. Two men in ski masks and guns forced their way into her office. While she shook in fear as she put the loot in the robbers' bag, her dog had a different reaction. One robber held his gun in one hand, and scratched the dog's ear with his other. When the robber stopped rubbing the dog's ear, the dog would nudge him until he started up again.
Probably not what Lassie would have done.
"I wouldn't expect the average golden retriever to necessarily show acts of heroism," Fox says. We've bred this breed to be so friendly that they may not know the difference between someone who is threatening, someone who's in distress or someone who is playing, he says.
"A golden retriever will likely greet all of them."
Nitschke isn't so sure. "Maybe the dog was responding to the level of arousal and was calming everything down. It may be why the woman didn't get shot," she suggests.
We'll probably never know what goes on inside the minds of our dogs. Perhaps someday, though, that dog might save a life -- just like Lassie.
Deborah Wood is the author of 11 books, including "Little Dogs: Training Your Pint-Sized Companion." You can view her blog at blog.oregonlive.com/pets or you can reach her by e-mail at TaoBowwow@aol.com or by mail at Deborah Wood/Pet Talk, The Oregonian, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201