People With Disabilities And Pets

I will never forget the time when I was eleven years old and staying with my grandparents at their apartment in Washington, D.C. I was in the kitchen watching TV, and my grandmother was in her office next to the kitchen. All of a sudden, I heard my grandmother fall. When I went to see what happened, I found her on the ground. She couldn’t get up. According to my mom, I immediately ran to the phone and dialed 911 – thought I don’t remember doing that. The next thing I remember is that I was riding down in an elevator with my grandmother on a stretcher with an oxygen mask strapped to her face. I will never forget her looking up at me, almost as if she were speaking visually, with her eyes saying “help me.” I didn’t fully understand what was going on, except that my grandmother was not okay and I was scared. 

Later, I would find out that my grandmother had suffered her first stroke. By the end of her life, she would fall victim to five strokes. My parents felt horrible that I had to see such a traumatic event, so they did what I now know is every child’s dream: they got me a dog. They had heard that one of their friends’ dogs had a litter of eight puppies, and they took me over to their friends’ house. We went down to the basement and there they were as adorable as they could be, a litter of puppies. We sat down on the couch and watched them play, and I fell in love with all of them. Then, one of them, a black and white Shih Tzu, who was a month old if that, broke away from the group and walked over to me. The next thing I knew he had climbed up on the couch and into the palm of my hand. His name was Sparky, and he was now my dog.

Sparky became my best friend. As sad as it may sound, at that time I didn’t have many friends, not because I couldn’t make them but because I was in and out of the hospital so much. Due to my health issues and learning disabilities, I didn’t have a normal school life. But I had Sparky. I talked to Sparky all the time, and it felt like he responded to me with human emotions. I even saw him cry a few times. For kids with similar issues who don’t have a lot of friends, a dog can be a great gift and also a teacher for a family that has someone living with any disabilities. Dogs can teach respect, love, and most of all loyalty. Sparky lived to be thirteen, which is old for a dog, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of how much better he made my life.