THE DOG YOU ALMOST DIDN’T KEEP IS THE ONE WHO GETS YOU HOME ALIVE.
By the time Shana, a two-week-old German Shepherd wolf hybrid puppy, came into Eve and Norman Fertig’s life, hers had already gone badly wrong. She was sick, crawling with fleas and worms, her ears infected, her ribs showing beneath a thin coat. She had been born into an illegally bred litter intended for use as bait in pit bull fighting. There was nothing heroic about her yet. She was simply a very small dog who had landed in a very bad place.
In 1999, the Fertig’s brought Shana home to Alden, New York, where they ran the Enchanted Forest Wildlife Sanctuary behind their house. Their days were already spent caring for injured and unwanted animals, including birds with broken wings and wildlife that could never be returned to the wild, so taking in a half dead wolf dog puppy was not entirely out of character. Shana arrived as one more damaged animal in a place built around giving damaged animals another chance.
Shana survived, then grew. And grew. Eventually she reached roughly 160 pounds, with a back Eve joked was as wide as a kitchen shelf. She followed the Fertig’s between the house and sanctuary buildings, sat down and howled whenever music played and otherwise settled into the completely unremarkable business of belonging to somebody. For seven years, that was the story. Meals, chores, animals to feed and the same paths walked back and forth across the property every day.
The Night Shana Dug Them Home
On October 12, 2006, Eve and Norman, both 81, went out around seven that evening to feed the sanctuary animals. Among them were an eighteen-year-old raven and a crow that had been shot, blinded in one eye and left with two broken legs. It had been a mild evening, and neither of them was dressed for winter.
Then western New York disappeared beneath snow.
The October storm came fast and violent, loading trees with heavy snow and ice until they began crashing to the ground. A large tree fell across the path between the sanctuary building and the Fertig’s house, about 200 feet away. More timber came down around them, blocking other routes and trapping the couple outside as the temperature dropped.
By 11:15 that night, Alden fire chief David Sublick was already on the road trying to reach people through conditions so bad he could see only a few feet in front of him. On the Fertig’s property, Eve and Norman had no way over the fallen trees and no heavy coats to protect them. They were cold, exhausted and running out of options.
Shana began digging.
She went underneath the fallen timber with her teeth and paws, clawing through snow, ice, roots and debris. For nearly two hours she worked beneath the trees, carving a tunnel roughly a foot wide and about twenty feet long. At one point she had been gone so long that Eve called for her. A howl and bark came back from the other side.
The opening was barely big enough for a dog, much less two people in their eighties. Trees were still falling, and neither Eve nor Norman was eager to crawl underneath them. Shana came back through the tunnel with a bleeding leg and badly injured paws, looked at the two people still standing on the wrong side of the trees and apparently decided they had discussed it long enough.
She grabbed Eve by the sleeve.
Shana pushed the tiny woman across her broad back while Norman held onto Eve’s legs, and together they worked their way beneath the fallen trees. Once they were through, Shana kept them moving across the property toward the house she had walked to with them thousands of times before.
They reached the back door around two in the morning.
The house was dark and almost as cold as the yard. The storm had knocked out the electricity, which meant there was no heat waiting for them inside. Eve and Norman collapsed on the floor near the door, and Shana climbed over them, covering as much of their bodies as she could with her own. Her paws were torn apart from digging, injuries that would take months to heal, but she stayed on top of them through the night while firefighters fought their way through the storm.
When emergency crews finally reached the house, they wanted to take the Fertig’s somewhere warm. Shana, a 160-pound wolf hybrid, could not come to the station. Eve would not leave without her. After everything that dog had just done to get them home, the discussion was over before it started. Instead, firefighters brought a generator to the house so the couple could have heat.
Shana became something of a local celebrity after that night. Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment gave her its Hero’s Award, an honor usually reserved for people, and the firefighters gave her a helmet of her own. Eve added one other tribute that probably suited Shana better than any plaque ever could. A bumper sticker on the car read: Little Red Riding Hood had no idea.
The Dog Who Saved Them Twice
A few months later, Shana did it again.
The Fertig’s boiler caught fire during the night. Shana grabbed Eve by the nightgown, pulled her out of bed and dragged her onto the porch. Then she went back inside for Norman and brought him out too.
The puppy who had once needed someone to save her had now saved the same two people twice.
Who Really Rescued Who?
Norman died in 2011, and the Fertig’s also lost their son. Life inside the house grew much quieter after that. Eve ate her meals without Norman across from her, but Shana still sat beside the chair. At night, she slept beside the bed.
That may be the better definition of rescue anyway. It is rarely one dramatic moment when somebody reaches down and changes an animal’s life. Most of it happens afterward, when nobody is watching. It is years of food bowls, muddy floors, ordinary walks and knowing exactly which set of footsteps is coming down the hall.
Shana knew the path home because she had walked it beside Eve and Norman for seven years. When that path disappeared beneath snow and fallen trees, she made another one.
Most dogs will never have to dig us out of a blizzard or drag us from a burning house. They rescue us in smaller ways, over and over, until one day we realize the arrangement was never as one sided as we thought.
We call them rescue dogs because at some point, somebody rescued them. Shana made the rest of the arrangement pretty clear.
