“The Bark That Saved His Life”

It was still dark when Tommy began to bark… something he never does.

Most mornings, the yellow Labrador wakes his owner, Hank Ford, with a nudge to the elbow or the bladder, signaling it's time to start the day. But this time, he jumped on the bed and pawed at Hank’s chest, waking him from a deep sleep. When Hank tried pushing him away, Tommy barked louder and started jumping on Hank's chest. 

When he finally got up, Hank noticed his heart was pounding and his head was dizzy. He cuffed a heart-rate monitor around his arm. His heart rate was 171, and his blood pressure was high. 

“That couldn’t be right,” he thought. But when Hank called the hospital triage line for help, they told him it was probably an incorrect reading.

But Tommy the Lab wouldn’t stop pacing. 

Now Hank knew something was really wrong. He hung up the phone, got in his car, and drove himself to the emergency room. There, doctors diagnosed him with Atrial fibrillation (AFib) — a serious heart disorder. They rushed Hank into care, shocked his heart back into rhythm, and later performed an ablation to correct the issue.

After twenty years in the military, Hank, now 54, thought he knew what a wake-up call felt like... until this one.

He had served in both the Marine Corps and the U.S. Army, through Desert Storm, Iraq, and years of deployments that blurred together. But when the missions ended, the noise didn’t. Hank carried it home — the restlessness, the anger, the silence. The VA warned him that the high-adrenaline life would eventually crash… and that’s what was happening. 

“I don’t like saying it,” he admitted, “but the bottle was my friend for a while.” A VA clinician saw where that alcohol abuse was heading, telling Hank, "I'm not going to call you suicidal, but you have suicidal tendencies."

Hank knew he needed help. He just didn’t know where to find it… until the VA recommended he get a service dog.

But Hank soon learned that’s easier said than done. Every program he called told him he had to wait four to five years for a trained dog. Then a woman named Mary Beth at Dogs Inc picked up the phone. She started his paperwork that same day.

Soon after, a trainer named Amy met him at his home and introduced him to Hank’s future guardian angel, Tommy. Amy taught them how to forge a bond and navigate their home of Fort Lupton, Colorado, together.

Hank said that time training and getting to know each other was crucial — “Ninety days on leash builds that team. After day ninety, it was like I never took it off. He follows me everywhere.”

That bond became a lifesaver on that February morning this year. The doctors later told Hank that if Tommy had not woken him up, he would’ve likely never woken up.

When he returned home from the hospital, Tommy climbed into bed and laid a paw on Hank’s chest — right where it had all begun.

These days, Hank wakes at 6:45am sharp. Tommy doesn’t let him sleep his life away anymore. The Marine who once sought only quiet got his civilian job back as a golf-course marshal, transforming from someone who, as Hank said, “was looking for a fight” to “probably the friendliest marshal out there.”

“Everyone talks about a light at the end of the tunnel,” he told me. “Tommy turned the lights on… I believe the daily suicide count would drop if more trained dogs were in veterans’ lives.”

Here’s a reaction to a story from last week’s newsletter, “Cop Rescues Cat.”

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When Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine in 1955 — an endeavor decades in the making — he made an extraordinary decision motivated by the greater good. Instead of patenting the vaccine, which would have made him rich beyond his wildest dreams, Salk chose to forgo any patent or profit so that the vaccine could be distributed as widely and cheaply as possible to eradicate the disease. When asked why he made such an extraordinary choice, he simply responded, “Could you patent the sun?”

All in all, that decision has saved an estimated 18 million lives worldwide… and counting.

Well, this got my happy tears going this week. I’m in the middle of moving offices in NYC, and I stumbled across this letter from September 2023 from a man named Bob Lawrence. It’s the perfect reminder of the impact of great teachers (like the ones I had!) and how they can guide you to become your best self. Thank YOU, Bob!