Man’s best friend… or guardian angel?
Published: October 16, 2006
They say animals can sense fear. But can they sense upcoming pain? In their master?
Terry Rook will testify to that and believes that his black lab/Australian shepherd is not just “man’s best friend,” but his guardian angel in disguise.
Rook, of Fort Madison, is a Viet- nam War veteran and he was wounded in combat. But his spine injury occurred when he fell off a ladder in Ohio on April 7. He was working in building maintenance for the state of Ohio.
The smallest disk of the spine, C-1, was jammed between the brain stem and the spinal cord, and his doctor said it would be too risky to operate on him.
“At times I just had a sore neck,” Rook said. But the damage began to affect his right foot. “I started off with a slight limp, and then it became a drop foot.” Now he can only drag it when he walks with a cane, so he usually gets around by wheelchair.
A few months ago, Rook and Midnight, then about three months old, were out in the back yard of his Avenue O home. Rook kept Midnight in line with a retractable leash. Soon it was time to go back in the house, which required Rook getting his wheelchair over an inch-high doorstep.
Before he got there, however, Rook heard a loud pop from the back of his neck. “The pain accompanying it was out of this world.”
Tears began to run down his face, and Rook dropped the leash. Midnight, who had heard the pop, didn’t know what to make of it, so he gave the leash back to his owner. “He came over and put it in my hand. But I was in so much pain, I dropped it again.” Midnight again retrieved the leash. “He reached up and licked my tears, and then he kept trying to pull the leash,” Rook said.
“I flipped the button on the cord to lock it, and he grabbed hold of the cord. He started pulling backwards and pulled me and that wheelchair over that inch-high doorstep into the house.
“I was hurting so bad I couldn’t say anything.”
So Midnight started to bark, alerting Rook’s fiancee’, Diane West, that something was wrong. “She tried massaging my neck, but the more she touched, the more I hurt,” Rook said. “Midnight started growling at her.”
But this was not a one-time fluke - a brief momentum of adrenaline-rush as has happened with humans in times of stress in which they can lift up a vehicle off a loved one.
“He’s done things like this two or three times,” Rook said.
Rook read once that some dogs can sense an owner’s epileptic seizures. Soon after this incident, that notion was brought up in Rook’s case.
“Last week I was in the kitchen and stood up (from his wheelchair) to get a coffee cup. Midnight looked at me and he started barking like crazy. He kept pushing me back in my wheelchair. Diane said, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”
Ten minutes later, Rook’s disk popped again. “He knew that was coming,” West said.
“He’s done this four or five times,” Rook said. “He’s very protective of me.” West’s son, Andy Bowers, has also witnessed several such incidents.
Rook, at only five months old, is barely four years old in human years, but he’s showing a maturity beyond those years.
“I believe God brought this dog to me,” Rook said. “Since we’ve had this dog, my will to live has changed. I’ve got a whole different outlook on life. Before, life didn’t matter to me.”
Rook said he has always believed in guardian angels. It just took awhile before he finally met his.
“I believe with all my heart I’ve got a guardian angel, and his name is Midnight.”
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