Our Best Friends: Wagging Tales to Warm the Heart

Book by Capuzzo Michael

Patches

Marvin Scott, owner of a furniture store just south of Tacoma, Washington, came home from work at about 10:00 p.m. one bitter cold December night.  The thermometer was hovering around zero, and the wind was whipping up waves on Lake Spanaway, where the Scotts' lakeside home sits.

Marvin was in his sixties, graying and bespectacled, given to dark suits, white shirts, and somber ties.  But he was a square-shouldered, rugged man who liked to putter around his property, so he announced to his wife at almost 11:00 that night that he was going down to a small pier below their lake home to check on possible ice damage to a patrol boat moored there.  As he clambered down the rocky, three-hundred-foot slope to the lake, Marvin was followed by his dog, Patches, a collie-malamute mix who liked to tag along.

At the lakeside, Marvin's fears were confirmed.  Noting that a film of ice was beginning to form around the boat, Marvin picked up a timber and tried to push the stern line to crack the ice.  But he did not realize that spray from the lake had made the pier boards glassy with ice, and as he pushed with the timber he slipped from the pier, his body struck a floating dock causing him to tear virtually all of the tendons and muscles in both legs, and he rolled off into the icy, fifteen-foot-deep water and went under.  The freezing waters, roiled by the storm, began to pull him toward the middle of the lake.

Suddenly, while still below the surface, Marvin felt something grasp him by the hair.  It was Patches, who had leaped into the icy waters and was holding his master firmly.  Patches pulled the dazed and shivering man to the surface, then towed him nearly twenty feet to where he could seize the edge of the floating dock.  Dimly aware that the dog, too, was by now nearly drowning and exhausted from his rescue efforts, Marvin managed to push him onto the dock.

But as Marvin, his legs immobile and useless, vainly attempted to climb onto the dock himself, the combination of the frigid water, his terrible injuries, and the water he had swallowed caused him to virtually black out, and his grip on the dock loosened.  He fell back into the water and again went under.

But again it was Patches to the rescue.  The courageous dog leaped in instantly, again seized him by the hair, and this time pulled him about four feet to the dock.  After Marvin had recovered enough to push Patches onto the dock, the man hung on grimly to the dock and screamed for help.  But with the late hour and the wind against him, his cries could not be heard.  Marvin, his grip on the dock loosening once again, knew he had no more energy left to fight and despaired that he was going to die.  As he began to slip into the water a third and final time, Patches braced his four feet firmly on the dock boards, grasped Marvin's overcoat collar in his teeth and tugged with might and main.  Encouraged by this unexpected assistance, Marvin struggled with every ounce of strength he had left and somehow, between the two of them, the gasping man was able to pull his body up onto the dock.

After he had regained his breath, Marvin began crawling toward the house, with Patches in front of him holding tenaciously to his master's collar and using every bit of strength he possessed to help pull the shivering and agonized man along.  Man and dog laboriously made their way in this fashion up the rock-studded, three-hundred-foot slope to a point near the back door, where Patches started barking a call for help, and Marvin was able to throw a stone against the door and alert his wife.

At Tacoma General Hospital, Marvin hovered between life and death for twenty-five days, with pneumonia a constant threat in addition to the massive operations required on both of his legs.  Patches, exhausted but not hurt, recovered quickly.  It was six months later, summer of the following year, before Marvin Scott was able to return to work at his furniture store.  He needed two canes to get about, walking more deliberately now, so Patches slowed his gait to match the pace of his master when he tagged along on walks around the house by the lake.  

--Teresa Banik Capuzzo
    
From the Hardcover edition.