Shelter Dogs (8 page)

Although most hearing-ear dogs are purebreds, Taj decided to get her dog from an animal shelter. She wanted to adopt a dog who would otherwise not have a home.

Taj went to the King County Animal Shelter in Kent, Washington. The shelter had a nine-week-old puppy, part black Labrador and part Siberian husky, who had been brought in because the owner couldn't find a home for him.

The puppy was coal black with expressive golden eyes and a friendly personality. Taj knew he would grow to be a large dog, and that was okay.

She named him Ivan and took him home. Alexandra loved the puppy, and Ivan quickly became a cherished member of the household. Even Taj's cat, Orca, enjoyed watching Ivan play.

Like any puppy, Ivan required a lot of attention and training. At first, Taj concentrated on house-training him. When that was accomplished, she began teaching him hand signals for “sit” and “come.”

As Ivan grew, he seemed to sense that Taj could not hear. When he wanted her attention, he didn't bark; instead, he went to her and nudged her.

A year after they adopted Ivan, Taj and her husband rented a new townhome. Alexandra got her own bedroom, and there was more room for Ivan, who was now fully grown. By then the Brumleves had learned that Alexandra was hearing-impaired like her mother, so Ivan's training and duties became even more important. He now had two deaf people to watch out for.

One afternoon Taj put three-year-old Alexandra in her bed for a nap. Then Taj went downstairs, with Ivan at her side. She stretched out on the couch in the living room and fell asleep. Ivan, as always, lay on the floor next to her.

Taj was sleeping soundly when she felt something heavy on her chest. Still half-asleep, she realized it was Ivan. Ivan weighed sixty pounds, so she definitely did not want him sitting on her.

He licked her face and pawed at her arm.

“Ivan, get down,” she said sleepily, pushing the dog to the floor. It took her a few minutes to wake up fully, but when she did, she realized that Ivan would never jump on her unless something was wrong.

She opened her eyes. Ivan was no longer beside her.

The room looked foggy, and she now smelled smoke. Fear jolted through Taj.

Fire!

She leaped off the couch.

Knowing Alexandra would not hear her call, Taj raced for the stairs. The thick smoke made her cough. Her eyes smarted, and her heart pounded with fear for her little girl.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she met Ivan—with Alexandra at his side! Ivan had Alexandra's shirt sleeve in his mouth. He was tugging the sleepy child forward toward the front door!

As soon as he knew Taj was awake, Ivan had gone upstairs to awaken Alexandra and lead her to safety.

Knowing that her daughter was safe, Taj quickly searched for the cause of the smoke, thinking she might be able to put the fire out. Nothing was burning in the kitchen. She hurried back to the stairway and looked up. Smoke billowed from around the sides of Alexandra's bedroom door.

Taj now knows that she should have taken Alexandra and Ivan outside immediately and stayed out herself. But that day she was only thinking of trying to put out the fire. She left Alexandra and Ivan downstairs and rushed up to Alexandra's room. She put her hands on the door and then jerked them back. The door was too hot to open.

She peered through the keyhole and saw nothing but blackness. Alexandra's bedroom was so full of smoke that Taj could not even see the outline of the bed.

“It was like looking into space,” Taj says.

She raced back down the stairs. By then the house was so full of smoke she could barely breathe. Taj grabbed Alexandra's hand and scooped up the terrified Orca. With Ivan following, they ran to their neighbor's home.

“Fire!” Taj screamed as she pounded on the neighbor's door.

The neighbor called 911. She kept Alexandra, Ivan, and Orca inside. Taj called her husband, Michael, at work and he rushed home.

Taj couldn't hear the wail of the approaching sirens, but she saw the fire trucks roar up the street. She watched as the firefighters aimed their hoses at her home.

Horrified, she saw the firefighters pull a burning mattress out of the house. Alexandra had been napping on that mattress. Taj knew that sleeping people are sometimes overcome by smoke inhalation; they never wake up to flee from the fire.

Tears streamed down her face as she thought what would have happened to Alexandra if Ivan had not smelled the smoke and jumped on Taj to wake her up. What if he had not gone up the stairs and entered that smoke-filled bedroom? What if he had not taken the little girl's sleeve in his mouth and tugged until she followed him down the stairs?

“Another fifteen minutes,” Taj says, “and Alexandra and I almost certainly would have been overcome by smoke. We probably wouldn't have made it.”

Thanks to Ivan, the firefighters arrived in time to extinguish the blaze before it spread to the rest of the house. Taj and Alexandra had some breathing problems from inhaling smoke, but they recovered fully by the next day.

When the fire was finally out, Taj and Michael gathered basic necessities and prepared to move temporarily to the Westin Hotel in Seattle, where Michael worked. Taj made sure to take Ivan's blue food dish along.

The fire happened on the day before Thanksgiving; Ivan was fifteen months old.

On Thanksgiving Day, as Taj and Michael looked at what was left of their smoke-blackened home, they gave thanks that Ivan had saved Alexandra and Taj.

The Brumleves lost nearly seven thousand dollars worth of belongings, including Alexandra's bed and most of her toys and books. They had just finished painting and decorating the child's bedroom; now it was destroyed by smoke and water damage. But the losses seemed unimportant compared to the tragedy they might have faced.

Investigators said the fire started in Alexandra's room and speculated that she might have been playing with matches.

Because of her hearing impairment, Alexandra still had a limited vocabulary. She couldn't tell anyone exactly what had happened. Regardless of how the fire began, one fact was clear: Ivan first woke Taj, and then raced upstairs to get Alexandra.

“That dog saved the mother's life and the child's life,” says Steve Gengo of the Redmond, Washington, Fire Department. “He acted on instinct; he saved his family.”

Each year the Seattle/King County chapter of the American Red Cross has a “Heroes Breakfast” to pay tribute to ordinary people who have performed unusual acts of courage or kindness. A year after the fire, the Red Cross honored Ivan as an Animal Hero.

By then the Brumleves had moved to Kansas, but Taj brought Ivan back to Seattle to receive his award. Ivan sat in the seat next to hers for the plane ride and was given a set of wings by the captain.

At the award breakfast, Ivan wore a vest and bow tie. He seemed to enjoy all the attention and wagged his tail happily at the crowd.

Taj gave Ivan's acceptance speech for him. “The lesson that should come out of this,” she said, “is that if you love your animals, they will love you.”

Besides his Red Cross award, Ivan was honored by Heinz Pet Products, which gave him a six-month supply of dog food and a certificate of merit.

Ivan continues to be both a hearing-ear dog and a beloved pet for Taj and Alexandra. “To me,” says Taj, “Ivan is the most wonderful mutt in the world.”

About Fire Prevention

Fire destroys more property and claims more lives each year than tornadoes, floods, or any other natural disaster. Most fire fatalities and injuries in the United States occur in the victim's own home. Here are some things you can do to keep yourself and your family safe:

ASPCA

442 E. 92nd St.

New York NY 10128

Bridgette

SEIZURE-ALERT DOG

Cliff Chartrand relaxes at his Richland, Washington, home with Bridgette, his seizure-alert dog.

8

T
HE BLACK-AND-WHITE DOG
had no name. The person who owned her had never bothered to give her one.

When the dog had fourteen puppies, her owner found homes for six of them. The remaining eight, along with the mother dog, were taken to the Oregon Humane Society in Portland, Oregon.

With silky fur, large ears, and a flowing tail, the mother dog appeared to be mostly border collie, with some spaniel and sheltie mixed in. She had not been house-trained, nor had she ever received any other kind of training. She seemed to be about two years old.

A staff member named her Bridgette.

The puppies were weaned and put up for adoption. Bridgette was put up for adoption, too.

Andrea Wall is a volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society. She soon noticed Bridgette standing at the front of her kennel, with her big ears perked up. Bridgette watched everyone and listened to everything. Andrea thought she seemed particularly intelligent.

Andrea had been on the lookout for exceptionally alert shelter dogs ever since she had met Jeanne Hampl. Jeanne had gone into a pet store one Saturday when Andrea had a shelter dog there as part of an Oregon Humane Society adoption program.

Jeanne introduced herself as the director of the Prison Pet Partnership Program (PPPP) at a women's prison. “We take dogs from animal rescue organizations,” she said, “and give them the opportunity to lead lives of service. They are trained by the prison inmates to be service dogs for people with disabilities or therapy dogs for people who will benefit from the animal-human bond.”

Intrigued, Andrea asked many questions. She learned that the Prison Pet Partnership Program was begun by Sister Pauline, a nun who believes that working with dogs helps people who must live in an institution, including those who are serving prison sentences.

In 1981, Sister Pauline got permission and funding to try her ideas at the Washington State Correctional Center for Women in Gig Harbor, Washington. The program proved so successful that it quickly expanded.

The prison now operates a full-service boarding kennel and offers grooming for all breeds. The inmate employees are certified as pet care technicians and/or groomers. Money earned from the boarding and grooming, as well as from training privately owned dogs, pays for the food, veterinary care, and other expenses of the dogs being trained as service dogs. The trained service dogs are given free to people who need them.

Dogs who enter the program but who do not pass the necessary tests to become service or therapy dogs are put up for adoption as Paroled Pets. They get basic obedience training and must pass the American Kennel Club's Good Citizen test, making them far more desirable as pets than when they entered the program.

The PPPP helps people, too. Prisoners who learn to groom or train dogs are in demand. Jeanne Hampl often gets calls from potential employers asking when the next inmate from the program will be released from prison, and offering that person a job.

Since that first meeting with Jeanne, Andrea had watched for any shelter dogs who seemed especially alert and friendly. Whenever she found one, she called Jeanne to tell her about it. Several of Andrea's “discoveries” had been accepted into the Prison Pet Partnership Program.