Happy Tails
Sunny: The four-legged Florence Nightingale
In the summer of 2007, unaware of the power her wish carried, Theresa P. said, “I always wanted a yellow Lab, and all my dogs have had ‘S’ names. … I said I wanted a yellow Lab and I would name it Sunny.”
Well, somebody out there was listening because shortly thereafter, surfing the Petfinder website at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning, she found waiting for her a 7-ish-year-old Golden Lab (a golden retriever/yellow Lab mix) — already named Sunny!
And this Golden Lab turned out to be “pure gold” shortly after joining the family.
Theresa’s 12-year-old daughter Cassie had been on a school field trip to Buck Hill last February when she was severely injured in a skiing accident. She’d broken several bones — among which were her arm, her skull, the bones around her eye and cheek, and her outer pelvis — suffered a concussion with bleeding on the brain, bruised a lung, and lacerated her liver via a broken rib. She was in intensive care for two days and on the pediatric ward for another two.
While Theresa stayed nonstop at the hospital with her youngest child, her husband John and 14-year-old daughter Leah reported that Sunny was quite obviously looking for her and Cassie back at home, repeatedly wandering into their rooms.
Upon hearing that, Theresa did what anyone might do: She took a sock off Cassie’s foot and started rubbing it on her daughter’s head.
“What are you doing?!” John and Leah cried.
Theresa said, “Leah, I want you to take this sock home and let Sunny smell it so she knows that Cassie is OK.”
Leah delivered the scent-laden greeting card to Sunny, who sniffed it, took it in her mouth and ran around the house with it, so very happy to have word of Cassie sent in her own language.
The next day, Cassie returned home to find a 70-pound lap dog wanna-be, longing to be as close to her as possible. Sunny stayed by Cassie’s side almost incessantly for weeks, sleeping with her in her room, lying alongside the tub when Cassie bathed and positioning herself between Cassie and any visitors on the couch.
“Our pastor jokingly called Sunny the security checkpoint,” Theresa said.
“[Sunny] was very gentle about it, but she just wanted everyone to know she was there to take care of this little girl,” Theresa interpreted.
Though as a norm Sunny “tends to be more Leah’s dog,” Theresa said, “I was just amazed how Sunny knew [who needed her more then]. … I’d never witnessed anything like that before. … I didn’t know the dog would be like her shadow for that amount of time. … It was just really good healing for Cassie.”
Happily, things are back to normal now. “It’s remarkable how kids bounce back,” Theresa said.
Sunny is giving Leah lots of attention again, now that the crisis with her sister is past.
Thanks to that ultra-intuitive pooch, Theresa noted, “Leah’s not feeling left out anymore.”
by Sid Korpi ©2008
photos by Jessica Hackner