[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Monday, July 7, 2014

[Paul]

Hello and good day to all my readers out there.  I hope that you all are doing well today, by God's matchless grace and His providential care.

As promised yesterday, we are going to resume the Daily Thought articles, and if you are an animal lover, especially stories of animals helping people, you are going to really like this one.  This warmhearted and inspirational story is by Lu Picard of Torrington, Connecticut and is entitled "Dogs of Peace," rendered as follows:

Graduation Day! The assembly room at Children's Village, a New York residential center for at-risk teens, was crowded with spectators.  All eyes were on the graduates:  four large dogs--two yellow Labs, a black Lab, and a golden retriever--and four wounded veterans who'd served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  My own gaze kept shifting, though, to the 12 teenage boys from the Village who, for the past year, had been training the dogs for this moment.

Actually, the preparation for this day began 14 years ago, when my widowed 67-year-old dad suffered a stroke.  No longer able to live alone, Dad moved in with my husband, Dale, and me, our two daughters and Juliet ("Jules" for short), a wheaten terri/Portuguese water dog mix.  It was wrenching to see my vigorous father sitting on the sofa, unable to stand without help, hating to have to keep asking.  "What use am I?" he'd say.  "The stroke should've killed me!"

Dale, our girls, and I did our best to cheer him up, but Jules was the only one who seemed to bring him any comfort.  She would lay her shaggy head on Dad's lap as though she sensed his isolation.

That gave me an idea.  Once he was standing, Dad could get around fairly well with his walker.  Jules was a sturdy dog.  Maybe if I rigged up a harness, she could pull Dad up.  I fitted one end of a leather strap under her chest, the other beneath her stomach and fastened it to her leash.  And Jules, as dogs will do when pulled, tugged the other way--lifting me effortlessly to my feet!

I repeated the routine over and over, running through a whole box of dog biscuits and adding commands.  "Stay!" when I stood.  "Slow!" as I took a step with the walker.  After a week of practice, I went to where Dad slumped, withdrawn and morose, on the sofa, handed him the leash and told him to pull on it.

Jules pulled the other way and suddenly, marvelously, Dad was standing.

They were inseparable, man and dog, from that moment on.  Jules learned other skills--picking up a dropped pencil, bringing a magazine from a tabletop.  And Dad! The simple ability to rise without calling on one of us restored his self-respect.  Jules was company for Dad, too, in our busy household.  He'd chat away to her, and she'd listen, rapt, her brown eyes alert, her tail wagging.

I believe that our best ideas come from God and that they're not meant for our own benefit alone.  Seeing the difference Jules made in Dad's life, I began training dogs to help other physically challenged people.  Each disability, I soon learned, called for a different kind of assistance.  Balance for a child with cerebral palsy.  For the wheelchair bound, opening a door.  For paraplegics, unzipping a jacket, pulling off shoes and socks.  Eventually, Dale and I both quit our regular jobs to give our full attention to breeding and training dogs for this work.

And our teenage trainers? That idea, too, came as God's answer to a need.  First, in our own family.  Our younger daughter had a learning disability that made school a misery for her.  I prayed for a solution.  "Teach her to train dogs," I seemed to hear--and we quickly discovered that she excelled at it! I watched my daughter carry herself with new confidence, and I wondered if working with dogs would help kids with more serious mental and emotional challenges.  The answer was an emphatic "Yes!"

Today, our dogs are trained at five residential centers in the New York area.  Starting at the age of eight weeks, the puppies progress through "Grade school," "middle school," and "high school" under the guidance of young trainers.  The dogs come here to Children's Village at one year old for "college" and "grad school," learning the remainder of the 80 commands they must respond to and the special skills needed by the particular owner each one will assist.

The effect on this work on the kids is wonderful to watch.  The training classroom is a concrete-block space about the size of a basketball court, with a refrigerator, washer and dryer, and other appliances that can be challenging for the disabled.  I remember the first time a 17-year-old boy I'll call Tommy came in.  Like so many boys at Children's Village who've been abandoned by their families and put into foster care or who've spent time in reform schools, he had a tough-guy swagger, a kind of armor against a hostile world.

I paired him with a golden retriever, and the first thing I told him was that it would take patience to turn this lively puppy into a trustworthy dog.  Tommy, like most of the kids when they arrive here, didn't know how to handle momentary frustration.  When his dog failed to respond to his first command, Tommy threw down the leash.  Yet he came back the next day and the next.  Three months later I watched as his dog failed 14 times to drop a shirt from the dryer into the laundry basket.  Quietly, calmly, Tommy gave the command one more time.  The dog got it right.  I don't know who was more overjoyed, Tommy or me.  Week by week I watched him make an even greater discovery:  Dogs learn not through punishment--the only kind of teaching Tommy had known--but through praise.  I fought back tears the day I saw Tommy, both arms around his big retriever, whispering, "Good boy! Good Boy!" into a furry ear.

He desperately wanted praise himself--they all do, these kids who've seen themselves only as failures.  Each time one of them controls his temper or teaches his dog a new command, I catch them looking at me, wanting my approval.

And I give it to them, thanking them at the close of each two-hour training session for what they've accomplished.  But I'm watching, too, waiting for the moment when they stop looking at me, when they've developed a sense of self-worth and no longer need validation from me.

That's why, on Graduation Day, my eyes so often went to Tommy and the other young trainers.  Solemnly, they led the dogs one by one to their new owners.  Taking Blue's leash was 22-year-old Andrew, who lost his legs in a bombing; he and Blue will go home to Minnesota.  Ricky, 48, has spinal injuries, but when he and Raeburn get back to upstate New York, he tells me, "I won't have to bother my wife to do everything for me." Twenty-three-year-old Mary who lost both arms in an explosion, says that at home in Texas, Remi will do things she wouldn't have believed possible, "Like pushing an elevator button!" And Luis, a 35-year-old Brooklyn man whose night terrors were as bad as his physical injuries, believes he'll sleep better knowing that Tuesday is curled up next to him.

I kept looking at the teenage trainers, their faces aglow with pride.  Tommy, George, Danny, not one of those 12 kids so much as glanced at me! And I knew, as each one stepped forward to hand over his leash, I was seeing three changed lives:  an injured soldier's, a dog's, and a boy's.

Now, wasn't that an inspiring story? I've one question:  Have any one of you readers been to Children's Village and, if you have, was what was described accurate? I know of one person besides myself who would like to know.  Thanks for any info regarding this.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow there will be another Daily Thought message for you.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul