When they rescue us

Last month, I wrote about animals coming to one another’s aid when one is hurt, in distress or threatened. While researching and reading stories of their service to each other, I also came across — and remembered — stories about animals whose actions had soothed and sometimes saved a human.

While writing that column, I was taking an on-line class and, one evening, the instructor’s golden retriever suddenly began sniffing, licking and pulling at her.

“I’m diabetic, and she’s is trained to detect my blood sugar levels,” she explained.

She tried to ignore the dog but to no avail.

“Alright, we’ll go check my sugar …,” she finally said. Off screen we heard her say, “She was right!” She came back and showed us the device which read, “High.”

That reminded me of another story I’d heard years ago about a man who brought his service dog to work every day. The dog detected heart issues, and alerted the man if he needed medication or assistance. One day, the dog started going over to one of the man’s co-workers. Finally, he asked this co-worker if he had any heart issues he knew of because the dog was trained to detect that. The man replied “no,” but the dog continued to visit him for the rest of the day.

That night, this man went home and took his own life. The dog had indeed detected a heart issue, but an emotional one, a broken heart.

Remembering that story reminded me of another story from my own life, when I’d had the worst waitressing day of my entire life. Among other things, a customer shoved his plate into my stomach and yelled at me because his pancakes were overcooked. At 10 p.m., the headache I’d had since noon was still raging.

I’d taken so much headache medicine I was nauseous, and was just sitting on my couch, crying. That’s when my tortoiseshell cat Oyate climbed into my lap, positioned herself so I was cradling her like a baby, and began stroking my face with her paw. Within 20 minutes, my headache had vanished.

In 2010, while creating my workshop on compassion fatigue, I came across a poem called “Essay on Compassion” by Richard Lehnert, published in the July 2003 issue of The SUN magazine.

Inspired by the behavior and countenance of his own cat, Lehnert wrote: “When I cut my hand he lapped blood where it pooled like cooling grease, but showed me more affection when I cried for what I thought was loss of what I though was love; stared into my eyes, touched my cheek with one dry paw …”

He goes on to tell of a sea turtle who saved a shipwrecked woman, surfacing twice until she “accepted its back,” and staying afloat for two days until they reached a ship and she was saved.

“How to explain the turtle’s choice,” he wrote, “that as much as we want to say so and do not, it saved her life because it wanted to?”

Perhaps the humpback whale that saved whale biologist Nan Hauser from a tiger shark in 2017 also chose to help her when it swam under and lifted her up onto a boat and out of harm’s way. (That incredible video is available on-line.)

Twenty years earlier, in 1996, a female gorilla named Binti Jua rescued a toddler who’d fallen into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. Binti, who had just given birth to her own daughter, cradled the little boy like a baby and delivered him to zoo staff waiting at a gate.

I felt humbled reading and remembering these stories to think that an animal would even think to protect or soothe a human. I mean, why would they? We don’t always treat them with the same regard; we neglect and mistreat them for our own entertainment or gain, and kill them mercilessly for the same-or less.

Then I suppose the same could be said for the ways we often treat one another … They must, in the end, see us as equals in some respect — acknowledging that we are also alive and possessing of energy and a life force that they, too, regard as precious and important.

The last stanza of Lehnert’s poem refers first to his cat: “I think it better to assume that when he seems to think, he thinks; that when he seems to love, he loves,” and ends with: “that the turtle knew exactly what it did, and what would happen if it didn’t.”

(Colleen Dougherty is a writer, educator, artist and behavioral health therapist. Her 20-plus years in animal welfare include jobs and volunteer work in veterinary clinics, animal shelters and TNR organizations. She has been a speaker at the New Mexico State Humane Conference and the National LINK Conference in Albuquerque, holds degrees in art and counseling therapy, and graduate certificates in eco psychology and humane education. Her passion is building joyful and respectful relationships between animals, humans, and the Earth. She began writing Paw it Forward in March 2016.)