People, Pets: The Paws That Refresh Us

My mail system collapsed again. I have explained previously that I keep my column mail in a long gold florist box, which contained red roses from a delightful man one long ago St. Valentine’s Day.

From time to time, between bouts with termites and raccoons, I lift out a handful of letters and answer them in whatever order they are. That is because I treasure every letter and I don’t want to answer only the wittiest or most profound. I am grateful that anyone writes.

My mail system results in lots of nice people never hearing a word because sometimes when I almost reach the bottom of the box--I have never actually reached it--some of the mail is a year or more old and I am ashamed to answer it.

This time, I lost a marvelous letter I meant to write about, and only recently found it again. It was in the Barney and Chelsea mail, about the dogs who work at the Huntington Memorial Hospital Rehabilitation unit.

The letter is from a man who wrote about his dog who hated the weekends and loved Mondays, so much did she love her work. He wrote that she was a German shepherd. She and her partner were forest rangers and on Monday morning, she would run out and jump in their four-wheel-drive and head for the tall timber. They spent the years crawling along on their stomachs through the poison oak, scratchy underbrush and vines like barbed wire to evaluate possible routes for fire roads.

The mountains where they worked were full of rattlesnakes and, between them, they worked out a system so the dog could let the ranger know where the snake was. He and his dog worked together in the rough and perilous mountains until it was time for her to retire. Then she had several more quiet years, snoozing in the sun and wishing she could be with her master in the high country.

He also asked me if I would like to read a story he wrote about the much-loved dog. Of course I would.

“The guests at my retirement home are happy with their animals and those who don’t have a pet of their own all share in the pleasure of their antics.”

That is part of a letter from Olive Van Orden, a lady with heart and determination. In 1988, she bought a historic hotel in Monrovia, which she converted into a retirement home where guests can bring their loved pets. She had thought for a long time that people and their pets should be able to stay together.

Joan Hassler, who is the founder of International Guiding Eyes Inc., wrote to me about their training center where the puppies are trained and told me about the Beverly Hills Police Department, which is sponsoring a Labrador puppy as a memorial to one of their working dogs. It costs $10,000 to train a puppy and to pay for the hours of practice it takes to unite the dog with the blind person who is waiting for him.

International Guiding Eyes Inc. is in Sylmar, and I was invited to one their kindergarten graduation ceremonies by my treasured friend, Mary Ann Thomas, who is a board member of Guide Dogs for the Blind. She told me the ceremonies make you laugh and cry at the same time as the puppies with feet the size of tea cups try so hard to follow the obstacle course. Some of them do remarkably well and every once in a while a puppy will leave the course to chase a butterfly or examine a lizard. Then he stops, shakes his head and tries to get his mind back to the business at hand. They are still babies and concentration is hard.

Mary Ann had just come back from a board meeting in San Francisco where she met a young man who used to be with the SPCA in San Francisco. His name is Ken White and he had been director of animal therapy and had some wild stories to tell.

One of Mary Ann’s favorites was about an iguana that had an owner who was perfectly nice, but didn’t know much about iguanas. He kept the crawly fellow in a herpetology tank with artificial light. The poor iguana became paralyzed below the middle back because of a lack of sunlight.

At the same time, Ken was taking animals around to children’s hospitals and one day, he took the poor old iguana. There was a small boy in a wheelchair who could not walk but doctors could find no reason. It seemed to be sort of a hysterical paralysis. Ken told the little boy that the iguana wasn’t playing all four quarters either and suggested that the small boy get out of bed to cheer the iguana on. In a Disney finish, the small boy slid out of the wheelchair and walked unsteadily to the iguana where he said, “See, iguana, like this. First one foot and then the other.”

The little boy continued to recover and the iguana isn’t doing too badly, either, in a pen in the sun every day.

Ken told a horror story about a boa constrictor, not a cuddly creature, that was brought in with a broken back. It had been used as a whip in a sadomasochistic ceremony and certainly deserved better than that. It is living among understanding friends who have also experienced the savagery of man.

My warm thanks to Elaine Livesey-Fassel who again sent me one of her wonderful dog portrait cards, which are so real, you can almost feel the soft, velvet muzzle

I thank each and every one of you who wrote about the H.M.H. dogs and I hope the forest ranger sends me the story. I promise to answer it before it goes in the gold box.