Good dog!

[mrsv98]

Service animals are amazing...too bad dogs are just dumb animals and thank heavens the 911 dispatcher had the sense to "listen" to Fatih and respond....

Dog saves woman's life by calling 911
Friday, October 29, 2004 Posted: 7:26 AM EDT (1126 GMT)

RICHLAND, Washington (AP) -- Leana Beasley has faith that a dog is man's best friend.

Faith, a 4-year-old Rottweiler, phoned 911 when Beasley fell out of her wheelchair and barked urgently into the receiver until a dispatcher sent help. Then the service dog unlocked the front door for the police officer.

"I sensed there was a problem on the other end of the 911 call," said dispatcher Jenny Buchanan. "The dog was too persistent in barking directly into the phone receiver. I knew she was trying to tell me something."

Faith is trained to summon help by pushing a speed-dial button on the phone with her nose after taking the receiver off the hook, said her owner, Beasley, 45, who suffers grand mal seizures.

Guided by experts at the Assistance Dog Club of Puget Sound, Beasley helped train Faith herself.

The day of the fall, Faith "had been acting very clingy, wanting to be touching me all day long," Beasley said Thursday.

The dog, whose sensitive nose can detect changes in Beasley's body chemistry, is trained to alert her owner to impending seizures.

But that wasn't what was happening on September 7, and Faith apparently wasn't sure how to communicate the problem. During Beasley's three-week hospital stay, doctors determined her liver was not properly processing her seizure medication.

 

[Chicago526]

I know in some areas, you can notify 911 dispatch that you have a trained service animal, and if they get a call with a dog barking from your home, they know to send someone to check it out.

Really amazing what dogs can do!

 

[aimee11621]

Wow !!!!!

 

[EsmeraldaX]

 

[Shugardrawers]

The sheer brilliance of dogs never ceases to astound me. Good job faith!! Petey sends you a doggie cookie.

 

[alabamaalan]

That is great training!
That's a very good idea to make sure that 911 operators are aware that a particular number has a service dog so they will not have to question the call.

My wife is a guide dog user, so he doesn't have much in the way of phone skills.

After that bill from Dial-A-Poodle, I had to take away his phone privileges.

 

[DoeWDW]

Awesome story!

We have a local agency that trains service dogs for several different purposes. Some are assist dogs for people in wheelchairs who need help picking things up off the floor, etc. Some are assist dogs for the hearing impaired who get their owner's attention when the doorbell rings or the smoke alarm goes off. Some are assist dogs for people with balance issues - the dog is trained to let the person lean on them while walking, etc.

I really admire the people who get these dogs as puppies, spend a year and a half raising them and doing basic training, and then turn them over for their final training so they can be placed.

 

[goin2disneyagain]

I read this too. What a wonderful story about an amazing dog!!

 

[gr8tpanther]

Dogs are the best!

 

[kasar]

I have goosebumps reading this story - awesome! I was just talking to a man who came over to say hello to my lab and he said that his lab saved his life. She jumped on his bed in the middle of the night and started barking like crazy. She'd never done that before and it woke the whole house up. They called 911 and the ambulance got there just as the man was having a heart attack. Doctors said he never would have survived if he didn't get the help he did. Amazing.

 

[chrissyk]

Originally posted by DoeWDW

I really admire the people who get these dogs as puppies, spend a year and a half raising them and doing basic training, and then turn them over for their final training so they can be placed.

I also really admire the training families. NEADS (our service dog agency around here) had a program through my old work where they asked for volunteers to foster a service puppy for a year. I wanted to do it, but ultimately I decided that it would be too hard to say goodbye at the end The people who can do that are much stronger than I am