"A Starlo's Star" Penny Joy's story...

By

 Cheryl Graham, Corvallis, OR

Penny’s forever owner

She’s just a little soul, but she has a big job. A really big job!  It’s not the kind of job that I chose her for and trained her to do. It’s a job that I’m certain God chose for her and equipped her with the natural skill to do it.  “All” that needed to happen was for her to get into the God-chosen forever home at the right time and for the God-chosen forever owner (me) to “get the picture.”  “It’s as though God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Penny is a miracle I gave you, pay attention!” Now I know that it’s not only a miracle that Penny came to me “pre-loaded” with her incredible skill and ability to communicate it. But it’s yet another miracle that I finally figured it all out!  “I guess that when you have the Creator’s hands in the midst of it all, it’s not so unusual that He would enable me to eventually figure it out so I could put Penny’s skill to good use!”

I’m a born animal lover, but I’m especially drawn to dogs. Of course, as most dog lovers do, I also have always had a breed that is special to me. I grew up with (American) Cocker Spaniels and had them in my adult life from the time I started graduate school at Oregon State University (also in Corvallis). My last Cocker, Annie, was the most special Cocker I’ve ever had. She lived with me through enormous life difficulties and changes. The greatest one was the gradual loss of my health to four chronic medical conditions that collectively rendered me disabled and unable to do my chosen life’s work. I became a Certified Health Education Specialist through incredible opportunities I pursued and which were eventually granted to me while in training. I was privileged to create and manage the first Health Promotion Department in a college student health center in the western United States (except for a few in California and Arizona). The Health Promotion Department at OSU Student Health Services was my dream job and not many people, especially women in the early 80s, get the privilege of creating a job and a department for it to be housed along with new positions for colleagues I would eventually hire there.

But multiple chronic medical conditions made the last four to five years of my work in this marvelous job progressively less productive and, until I had to quit working in August 2003 and start the process of getting on disability. Annie supported me emotionally through that terrible time of loss. She helped me cope with two rheumatological conditions (Rheumatoid Arthritis and Sjögren’s Syndrome), one neurological condition (Fibromyalgia) and a fourth condition of the inner ear called Meniere’s disease, which is an episodic disease that causes varying levels of vertigo, nausea and vomiting. 

By the time Annie died at the age of 15.25 years old in June from Cushing’s disease, my Meniere’s was literally flattening me on average 3 to 4 full days each week. I knew that I could no longer manage the needs of a Cocker Spaniel, but neither could I function emotionally living alone. I needed a smaller dog and decided that my best bet for perfection in a small dog would be a Cockapoo. So in the three weeks prior to Annie’s death, when I knew it was coming, I sought out good breeders of Cockapoo and I came upon Debbie Cowdrey’s Starlo’s Cockapoos on the web. After explaining my lifelong love of Cockers and my need for a smaller dog, Debbie sent me a photo of a 5.5 month old puppy she had that looked more Cocker like than many of her other puppies. I fell in love and put down a deposit.

Several days later, Annie’s hind quarters grew progressively weaker that I was clearly time for me to make that awful decision every good pet owner must eventually make because our animals lives are shorter than our own. Annie passed on June 16^th and it just so happened (yes, another “coincidence”) that Debbie was driving to the coast on June 18^th and I would be able to meet her to bring this little gal home. We bonded instantly, though I was concerned that her tail was frequently in the slightly down or fully down position, despite how happy she seemed to be. In October, I learned that she’d had a bladder infection likely the entire time I’d had her and with two weeks of antibiotics, that tail came back up and hasn’t quit moving since! It’s a gorgeous tail, too!

But long before I learned about the bladder infection, I discovered a series of behaviors that puzzled me. Penny would come to me as though wanting to be picked up, but rather than scratching on my knees as she does when she wants to be picked up, she drummed on my knees. Then, upon picking her up, she turned around in my arms and made full-on eye contact with me (not something dogs generally do), and she drummed lightly on my ears. In spite of my master’s degree, I’m a bit slow on the uptake sometime. It took until the fourth episode before I realized that Penny could predict and warn me of an impending Meniere’s episode! The ramifications of this overwhelmed me! It made her a service dog that wasn’t even trained for that purpose, but a service dog, nonetheless! And since then, she’s batted 1,000! She has never “warned me” when there was no episode coming and she has warned me of every one that has occurred since the day she came!

What this skill does is expand my freedom. With Penny in tow when I leave home, I have the freedom to stay out and do what I need to do or want to do unless and until she alerts me that I need to go home. She always gives me a minimum of 90 minutes, but has warned me as much as 3 hours and 20 minutes in advance of an impending episode!

Penny’s skill enables me to be less homebound and safer. When she alerts me, whether I’m at home or away, I can get home or whatever I’m doing, get safe. This has reduced the number of falls I’ve taken to zero since I brought Penny home! Well, I have to be honest, there was one fall. But it wasn’t due to Meniere’s. I was running for the phone and Penny was running to “beat me to it” when she got out in front of me and tripped me. I did a quick dive and roll over her to avoid squashing the life out of her when I landed on the floor! It left my face full of rug burns for a few weeks (almost gone now). But that one doesn’t count as a fall that occurred because Penny wasn’t doing her job!

Not only does this beautiful little dog have the ability to alert me to impending Meniere’s episodes, she has so many other good qualities, no one could help but love her! She is joyful when she plays. And Debbie warned me that she has a good sense of humor, which I see almost daily. Some of her antics belong in some kind of published forum. She is so intelligent; I can’t get anything past her. And she is the most affectionate dog I’ve ever owned.

I still love Cocker Spaniels. But from my perspective, Penny is one that weighs half as much and has a long, lanky Poodle body. She has a Cocker face/head, ears, coat and in the last two months, she has even grown considerable feathers on her hips, legs, feet and underside that are Cocker all the way. It never would have occurred to me to get a service dog because I’d never heard of a service dog for Meniere’s disease. But whether I’m flattened by Meniere’s, and/or by the pain-related illnesses, I am literally “out of it” four or five full days each week. I’ve had episodes last as long as 23 days (last year).  Once Penny alerts me, she’s happy to just hang out with me. She might be willing to play tug of war on my bed or I can sit in front of the sofa with my head back while I try to keep the world from spinning, and Penny will be happy to play fetch with her favorite toys. So Penny’s ability to be a spot on service dog has not impaired her ability to be a “real dog”! She still plays; she still loves to chase the kitties out of our yard. She loves being a dog. But she also loves me and she loves alerting me when I need to be alerted.  All I can say is “thank you” to Penny for your skill. “Thank you” to Debbie for your hard work in producing superior “stock.” And “Thank you” to God for making sure this pair-up happened – that this little soul with the big heart and huge skill was paired up with me at just the right time in my life. What more could anyone want or ask for? I only hope that more people with the kinds of needs I have that can be met with a service dog can find one as miraculously as I did. If you do, please be sure to appreciate not just the dog, but the breeder and God!

Annie Em (“Emily)                                       Penny Joy

4/1/94 to 6/16/09                                             1/28/09

Hosted by Register.com

Starlos Cockapoos, PO Box 2, Christmas Valley, OR 97641 | 1-541-576-2493 | Debbie@starloscockapoos.com or puppies@starloscockapoos.com