Strays to the Rescue
Lucy
"In 2002 I had surgery to remove a benign tumor on one side of my face. The surgery severed the main facial nerve and damaged the auditory nerve. I became completely deaf in that ear, my balance was affected, and one side of my face was totally paralyzed. I would need a number of surgeries to try to correct some of the problems caused by the paralysis. I was forty-nine, single, and had always enjoyed a very active life. I became self-conscious about my face and my deafness and struggled with depression...Then one day when a friend and I were talking about assistance dogs, I realized that I could get a hearing dog. I looked on the Internet and discovered the San Francisco SPCA Hearing Dog program. I was especially pleased that this hearing dog would come from a shelter. Even though I have hearing gloss in only one ear, was eligible because I sleep on my good ear and thus cannot hear the alarm clock or the smoke detector. I also lost a sense of what direction sounds were coming from...In the meantime someone from the SPCA had discovered Lucy at a rural shelter where the adoption rate was low and the euthanasia rate high...Since she seemed adoptable she went to the SPCA for their regular adoption program, but after a few days, a trainer there spotted her for the hearing dog program."
—Dorothy Diehl, Marriage and family therapist