Always by My Side

Author:Edward Grinnan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

THE SHOOTING RAMPAGE AT Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday, December 14, 2012, that took the lives of twenty children and six adults, struck close to Guideposts, geographically and emotionally. Our corporate headquarters is in Danbury, Connecticut, adjacent to Newtown, where the senseless mayhem occurred. Many of our employees had children in that school system. A former employee’s daughter was a victim. So this just wasn’t another nightmarish mass shooting. This wasn’t something you made go away by turning off CNN. This hit home. Big-time.

Julee could hardly bear to watch the coverage, but I was glued to the TV. How could this happen in our country? What sort of people had we become? No one had any answers. Just shock and pain and parents and families who would never find an answer.

I watched that outpouring of grief for hours on end. To this day it is the saddest thing I ever saw. Every minute was painful to watch, and I felt duty-bound to feel that pain, to share in it as if that would somehow help ameliorate all the suffering. At one point, there was a camera shot of a little girl hugging a golden retriever. I briefly thought about putting Millie in the Jeep and driving up to Newtown. I knew what she would do. I knew she would give comfort. Then CNN anchor Don Lemon came on to say that a group had arrived from Chicago called Comfort Dog Ministry, a team of golden retrievers and their handlers sponsored by Lutheran Church Charities. They’d been to Joplin, Missouri, after a tornado leveled the town, and to the New Jersey shore after Superstorm Sandy. These were dogs trained to deal with victims of trauma. Don Lemon had a child and a dog on camera. The little girl wouldn’t let go of the dog, who sat patiently, her fur wet with the child’s tears. Don tried to narrate the scene but got caught up in his own emotions. I thought, When this terrible business is all over, I want Guideposts to do a story on these dogs.

In May 2013, we published a piece by Barb Granado of Chicago, Illinois. Her golden, Hannah, had gone to Newtown, and Hannah’s story itself was one of the most inspiring we’ve ever told about a dog.

Barb heard about the shooting when her friend Sharon called. Barb instantly thought of her own two grandchildren, only slightly younger than the twenty Sandy Hook victims. It was simply incomprehensible that children so small could be subjected to such violence.

“We’ll probably be asked to go,” Sharon said. Barb and Sharon were handlers for Comfort Dog Ministry. The two women talked for a bit and then hung up to wait for the call from Tim Hetzner, founder of the program. Part of Barb dreaded that call. She’d been to hospitals and nursing homes with Hannah, but they had not yet been part of a disaster response team. She was expecting to be deployed to a natural disaster when the time came, which would be difficult enough emotionally.

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