Rescued abused dog saves owner’s life
By Phyllis DeGioia
November 5, 2009
A dog rescued many years ago, found as an emaciated stray with baling wire wrapped around her snout, repaid my friend last week by saving her life.
Thanks to a liver transplant a couple of years ago, Linda Mawhinney is getting back to a fairly normal state of health after years of creeping towards becoming terminally ill. She uses a pump for her diabetes, and just recently began working full time again. This past August I saw Linda for the first time in years. She lives in a suburb of Vancouver. She has been too ill to travel, and I just hadn’t made it out there in a long time.
Emma, an 11-year old shepherd mix, woke Linda up around 3 a.m. to tell Linda she wanted to go out. Linda staggered out to the kitchen aiming for the room behind it, which has the door to the back yard. Emma simply stopped by the kitchen counter and refused to budge. Groggy as all get out, Linda thought Emma wanted food, but her dish was full. Emma kept looking at the kitchen counter and then at Linda, then back to the counter, then back to Linda.
I can just see Emma doing this. She is one smart cookie.
“Eventually, I realized that my vision was quite blotchy and what she was indicating was my glucometer,” said Linda in an e-mail to me. The glucometer was on the kitchen counter where Emma was staring. Linda checked her blood sugar and found it dangerously low at 25 when normal is 90 to 140 (or 1.5 from a normal range of 5.2 to 7.6).
“If it had dipped any lower I would have blacked out completely,” said Linda, whose new job is a patient advisor for diabetics. “I started eating Dex4 tablets and Emma went outside, where it was raining heavily. Normally when it’s raining, she runs out and pees and then dashes back in the house. Not this night. She lay down in the grass for 15 minutes. This is significant because I have been known, in a hypoglycemic stupor, to take a couple of Dex4 tablets and go back to bed without checking to make sure it’s coming up and have subsequently tanked. After about 15 minutes, she came back in and again went to the counter where the glucometer was. I tried to get her to go down the hall to the bedroom, but she wouldn’t go until I had taken my blood again and told her that it was okay.”
Linda’s pump had been sending out noisy beeping alarms, but that night both Linda and her husband John (years ago I nicknamed him St. John) slept through them. It’s impossible to know if Emma was responding to the alarm or to a scent indicating a problem, but she not only knew something needed to be done immediately, she also figured out how to do it.
It’s frightening to think that without Emma, Linda could have died from this one episode after nearly dying two years ago (she was the sickest person her transplant surgeon had ever seen who survived). Linda’s health issues began almost 15 years ago, around the time I met her through an Internet dog list, and she is one hell of a survivor. I’ve never seen anyone that ill who had such an upbeat attitude every step of the way. In all the years I’ve known her, she’s only cried once that I know of, and not because she was sick or nearly dying: she cried because one of her dogs died in her arms while she was home alone and too sick to race the dog to the vet. Knowing that the dog wouldn’t have survived even if she’d been seen immediately never took away the pain.
At one point Emma was one of several rescued dogs in the house, but because of Linda’s health issues, Emma has been the only pet in the house for a while. Emma wasn’t there the last time I was, so this was the first time I met her. She’s an absolute doll. I took a lot of photos of them, and many of Emma, trying to show how happy she is despite the reasons for the scar around her snout. Linda and Emma have always had an emotional connection that went beyond the one she had with her other beloved dogs. It’s no surprise to the people who know them that Emma would be the dog to save Linda from a dangerous glucose drop; it would have been Emma if there were ten dogs in the house.
Emma is clearly getting a bit stiff these days, and her gait isn’t quite what it used to be. She has been totally content for years, and is an easy-going, affectionate girl. Whoever cruelly left her to starve with wire wrapped around her snout so that she couldn’t eat will surely get what he or she deserves in this world. Thankfully, Linda and Emma have always deserved each other, and now they have saved each other.
work. With Twyla’s arrival, we still went for walks in beach neighborhoods, but in the seven years since we’ve had her, those black and tan paws have never touched sand (which you would understand completely if you had ever tried to groom her very long, thick coat). Harper has been once or twice, by herself. That all changed on Saturday. We loaded everyone up and headed to
tracked down her people, but they didn’t want Cleo back. Arden wasn’t sure what to do with her, not having ever had a small dog before, but by that time it was too late; Cleo had wrapped herself inside Arden’s heart and clearly was not going anywhere. To this day, Arden still exclaims over Cleo’s gutsiness, despite her size, so when she had a chance to judge a
brought his camera to document the lesson, and we thought all the girls would enjoy the chance to do a little off-leash frolicking on the sand. Twyla seemed taken aback by the feel of the sand beneath her paws, but she soon got over that. She was not thrilled, however, the first time a wave washed up and got her wet. After that she carefully avoided any part of the beach that had any chance of getting her wet. Sand didn’t seem to bother her, though. She had it encrusted all over her face, giving it the look of being frosted by snow. After doing a little exploring, she chillaxed and gnawed on a piece of seaweed.
We had to wait a while for the instructor, Brandon Scolman, to arrive, but it was well worth it. He worked well with Cleo and she seemed to trust him from the start. Arden had put a flotation vest on her, and it was very easy to just pick Cleo up and place her on the board. From there the instructor carried the board (with Cleo on it) out into the surf, and swam her out over several breakers. They did this three times with Cleo magnificently riding the
board back to shore, with Arden’s other dog, Chipper, running out to meet her and make sure she was all right. Cleo wiped out at least once, but Brandon lifted her up and put her right back on the board. She always wears a stoic expression, so it’s hard to say if she was having a good time, but she was definitely a trooper.
when my friend Arden invited me to come check out yappy hour and help her celebrate her birthday and Chipper’s at
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were there for the hotel’s weekly canine cocktails event, held on its safely enclosed ninth-floor deck. Every Tuesday, from September through December, dogs and their people are invited to enjoy drinks and the view from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Live music, comfortable seating and fire pits add to the ambience. Oh, and the pool for the dogs to splash in. I’m not actually sure that’s why it’s there, but certainly on Tuesday night that’s how it was used.
Beagle, a Vizsla, a Pug, a Puggle, a Havanese, two Cavaliers and more. They all got along great, a testament to their owners’ socialization skills, although Harper, for whatever reason, seemed to take exception to one Bichon. Maybe she thought he was fresh. I asked one of the managers if they’d ever had any doggie dust-ups and he said no, this was pretty typical.
and produce a nice sit and a pleading look. I could see hotels preferring this crowd to, say, the Rolling Stones in their heyday. There were no cigarette burns on the tables or furniture thrown in the pool. People there for the first time said they would definitely come back.
I’ve always been a rather neurotic hand washer, even before I had non-specific hepatitis not once but twice (once idiopathic, once from a blood transfusion). I hate anything sticky on my hands, and so I wash after eating an apple or something that drips, or after cleaning the kitchen or bathroom. Knitting dries my hands. Sadly, thanks to genetics I also have fairly dry skin.
The third annual Darcy FUNDay took place on Saturday, September 26, which happens to be my husband’s birthday and is close to the actual founding date of the
weeks. Tamela, aka the blonde tornado, is the general, assigning tasks and following up to make sure everything is on track. She’s not afraid to crack the whip if she thinks we’re slacking off. I think she was Eisenhower in a previous life. Rima and Petra are her incredibly able colonels, hustling up amazing gift baskets from Three Dog Bakery, White Lotus Day Spa, Dawgy Style, California Fine Wine Tasting, Pet Junction, Crown Valley Animal Care Center, Romantic Style, Wild’s Animal Supplies and more. They planned the color scheme, shopped for all the decorations, organized the sign-in and silent auction sheets, and wrapped all the donated items. Pam and Mike Becker and Suzie Cordes couldn’t come because of previous commitments, but they showed up early to help set up. Now those are real friends! Our husbands are the muscle and transportation. We couldn’t do without them.
Me? I write the songs, I mean the checks, kept track of the registrations, rounded up speakers, and did my share of acquiring prizes. They included books and magazines from publishers TFH and Bowtie; decorative Cavalier items from our good friend and breeder of Bella and Harper Joanne Nash; signed copies from D. Caroline Coile, Ph.D, of her book
Approximately 60 people gathered for our games, speakers and potluck picnic. We’re not a typical breed club. We call ourselves the South Orange County Cavalier Companions, and we’re pet owners who started meeting informally at a Mission Viejo park about 10 years ago. Through word of mouth, we’ve grown to approximately 250, although not everyone comes to every meeting.People have moved or live an hour or more away, but usually you can find 20 or 30 of us at one of the regular meetings and 40 or more at a Darcy FUNDay. There are always a few who have been there since the beginning and knew the Darcinator in person, but everyone seems enthusiastic about the cause, or at least the good time that we have.
pretty little mix who might have been a Lhasapoo or a Cavachon. Someone with a Bernese Mountain Dog walked by our site. Tamela’s husband, Mike, laughed. “Look, a giant tricolor.” The more typically sized tricolor to the right is clearly in, uh, hunting mode. Also seen were a ladybug, a cheerleader and a firefighter.
Pet edu-tainer and my cocktail buddy
including signs and treatment, and new medications such as pimobendan (Vetmedin) and took questions from the audience about diet, exercise and lifespan. I can’t say enough good things about veterinarians like Dr. Miller who are willing to give up their Saturday morning to help educate pet owners or participate in health clinics so that people who might not otherwise have a chance to take their dogs to a specialist can have the opportunity to learn more or to get a baseline report on their dog’s condition. We hope she’ll come back sometime. I spent a lot of time worrying about Bella, concerned that she would be stressed by all the people, dogs and activity, not to mention the heat, even though the pen was in a shaded, breezy area, but she was a trooper and did just fine. I was still glad a cardiologist was there, though.
“oldest dog” or “cutest costume” for them. They’re stuck in the Cavalier corral, begging for attention from strangers while I make the rounds to ensure that all is going well or make announcements or answer questions. (I think they’re grateful that they’re not in the costume contest, though.) Tamela’s dogs didn’t get to come,
either. The English Toys stayed home, and Farley, a handsome ruby boy, was in the hospital with pneumonia, fighting for his life. Tamela had planned to bring him home yesterday afternoon, but when she got to the hospital he had taken a turn for the worse. We’re all pulling for him. He’s a sweet dog and a poster boy for Cavaliers: 9 years old and murmur-free. I just got the good news that Tamela is picking him up from the veterinary hospital. That makes me happy. He and Darcy were special friends, as seen in the photo above, and I’d hate to see anything happen to him.
Arden did a brief video of the event, so if these photos leave you wanting more, 