Animal Affairs: An Act of Lifesaving Love

Bill Burns' day began like any other. When he went outside to let the dogs out, they brought him their regular daily gifts of rocks and twigs. Butch, the playful 5-year-old Black Lab, selected a gnarled stick. Dusty, the 17-year-old Yellow Lab who Burns calls “my old lady” plopped a rock into Burns' cupped palm.

“Wow, thanks,” Burns said lovingly, as he does every day. “These sure look like precious gems,” before setting them gently on the ground and giving each a dog a scratch behind the ears.

The dogs followed Burns, 54, on his morning routine of feeding the three Belgian horses, one goat and outdoor dog, and 11 cats, who all share the four-acre ranch in Centerton , Indiana with Burns and his wife, Pamela June, 54, who does administrative work for a steel company. Though Pam are both dog lovers, Dusty and Butch bonded with Burns from the beginning and became his dogs.

“They're inseparable. Bill feeds them, walks them, even vacuums up the dog fur,” Pam said.

Just like usual, when Burns took the tractor out, Butch and Dusty rode in the hay wagon in back. When Burns drove the pickup truck into a neighboring town for lunch, Dusty sat shotgun and stared intently out the window for other dogs; Butch's ears flapped in the wind as he perched in the back. Burns spent the rest of the day in his furniture restoration and woodworking shop that he's run from his home for 35 years, and the dogs stretched out by his feet and kept him quiet company.

Burns has battled Type 1 diabetes for the past 15 years, and every day takes between 30-34 pills, plus five injections of insulin, to manage the disease. Only two weeks before, his doctors changed his medication mix and times he took them because he'd felt anxiousness, especially in the evening. But the new combination didn't change that—he felt both foggy and antsy, like he couldn't sit still.

So that night he didn't want to watch his favorite TV show, Dancing with the Stars, with Pam, a Thursday night at 9:00 date they kept each week. Instead, he needed to walk, to keep his feet moving in hopes that it would shake the jitters away. This January night, Burns decided to take the dogs for the regular four-block loop in their neighborhood. Pam stayed in to watch their show, thinking her husband was out in his workshop for the next few hours, and soon dozed off.

Instead, Burns grabbed a flashlight and started walking, with Dusty right in front of him and Butch at his heel. They walked for about twenty minutes, but the medication made Burns confused and he soon got off-track from his regular path. Nearly a mile down the road, in the middle of a cornfield—in a place where not even Pam would know to look for him—Burns collapsed and fell into a diabetic semi-coma.

Nearly two hours later, Steve Hoffman, a 28-year-old Sheriff's Deputy, was patrolling a rural county road that runs along stretches of cornfield—no street lights, one lane in each direction, and not highly trafficked—when a car flew by at 20 mph over the speed limit. Hoffman turned around to pursue the car, following it farther down the road, where he stopped to give the driver a speeding ticket. But as he got back into his car, Hoffman noticed a light flashing and waving about three football fields away, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. He drove toward the light in the field, shining his car's spotlight into the darkness, and that's when he saw it: a big black dog holding a flashlight in its mouth like a bone, and behind that, a yellow dog lying across a man's chest.

Hoffman worried he'd found a body and radioed for an ambulance. As he stepped forward to investigate, Butch and Dusty each let out a low growl. But Hoffman, a lifelong animal lover, knew just how to speak their language.

“It's okay, guys. I'm not here hurt you or him—I'm here to help,” he said.

The dogs seemed reassured but cautious; they backed up, but sat watching only a few feet away, their dark eyes darting between Burns and Hoffman.

Hoffman reached down to check Burns and noticed the diabetic medical bracelet on his wrist. Hoffman took Burns' vital signs—he was unconscious, had no pulse, and wasn't breathing—and Hoffman had no idea how long Burns had been lying in this condition. But despite the 32 degree temperature, he was still warm to the touch, because as Butch waved the flashlight, Dusty had laid across Burns' chest, which protected him and helped keep him from freezing.

Hoffman knew he had to work fast, and began performing CPR. Burns remained unconscious, but quickly began breathing on his own.

“I could see the relief in the dogs' faces,” he said. “It was almost like they were both happier, smiling, now that somebody was there to help.”

In less than ten minutes, the ambulance arrived. Butch and Dusty followed Burns' gurney through the field to the ambulance, where they met Pam , whose contact information they'd found in Burns' wallet.

“I was shaking, and I had to practically drag the dogs to the car—they just did not want to leave Bill's side,” Pam said. She quickly dropped the dogs off at home before meeting her husband at the hospital.

Burns emerged from his coma at 4:30 the next afternoon, after a long day of tests and medicine adjustments. Hoffman came to visit him, and was the first one to tell Burns that his dogs had saved his life. Burns was emotional, but managed to keep from crying by focusing instead on his surprise—he and Pam just couldn't believe what their dogs had done. They knew Butch and Dusty loved them, but they'd never thought their untrained, country farm dogs could perform this type of miracle.

“I always read stories about dogs saving people, but you never think it's going to happen to you, that your own dogs could do that,” Pam said. “I'm just thankful they knew what to do that night.”

After several days in the hospital, Burns got his medications adjusted and headed for home, excited to reunite with the dogs who he loved like children. As soon as he walked in the door, Butch made a commotion of panting and sniffing, but Dusty was the exact opposite. As Burns sat down, Dusty slowly, somberly walked over to him. She put her head down against his leg and started wailing, just crying and whimpering—and that's what got Burns. He started crying too, so thankful that the love he shows his dogs every day was returned on the one day when he truly needed them.

These days, Burns is still trying to figure out how Butch and Dusty knew what to do. He's put a flashlight in front of Butch several times since, hoping to see the dog play with it like a toy, which would explain what Butch did that night in the field—but not once has Butch so much as sniffed at it.

Maternal Dusty doesn't let Burns out of her sight. He thinks it's because as she lay on top of his chest that night in the field, she felt his heart stop, that she thought he was gone for good. So now every night as Burns and Pam climb into bed, Dusty runs in to check on him. She comes close to his side of the bed, looks him over, and then goes back to sleep. The dog who used to love dozing for 23 hours a day now gets up three times every night to check on Burns while he's asleep to make sure he's okay—just another gesture that makes Burns thankful for all his luck and love.

Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal, May 2006.