Sixth Sense

Friends said she should put her dog to sleep. He was old and ill and now he was acting strangely

By Chris Bohjalian

Pam and her husband, Troy Sica, live in a modest but immaculately well-maintained bungalow in a quiet neighborhood. Pam is a bartender at an upmarket hotel and Troy an air traffic controller.

In april 2000, Pam learned that her beloved Bullet (her dog), had a tumour the size of a pea on his liver. Given the dog’s age, his veterinarian, Dr Laurence Cangro, recommended that they merely monitor the growth.

Pam was devastated. She had lost other pets, but she had built a special bond with Bullet. He had come into her life as a seven-week-old-puppy in a basket on her front porch, with a red bow around him and a card that asked, “Will you be my mummy?”

Foe over a decade the dog had, in many ways, been her baby. Pam and Troy had tried to conceive a child for several years and though she’d become pregnant four times, each pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. “My whole life was my animals because they said I could never have children, “Pam says. She was 41, the year she got the bad news about Bullet.

By August the tumour had mushroomed and Dr. Cangro realized that the Sicas faced some hard choices. “The concern with liver masses is that they can tear and bleed. There was a big risk of haemorrhaging to death if it ruptured, “Cangro recalls. But surgery on a golden retri

“In my experience, maybe one in ten people would go to that extent and that expense for a dog that old, “says Cangro.

But Pam and Troy were ready to do just that—even if it meant financial hardship. Indeed, the couple would ultimately spend close to $5000 on tests, surgery and postoperative care. “My friends and family said I was crazy spending that kind of money on a dog, “Pam recalls. “But Bullet gave me my best years as my friend. How could I not do this for him?”

Troy and Pam took the dog to their local priest to have him blessed, and on September 1, 2000, a heart specialist and a veterinary surgeon removed the tumour from Bul

et’s liver. Not only did Bullet survive the surgery, he surprised the vets by waking up hungry from the anesthesia.  He was home with the Sicas within days.

It was a little miracle and then about a year later another happened. While vacationing at Walt Disney World, of all places, Pam took a home pregnancy test that turned out positive.

Quiet sure that this would be her last chance, Pam did everything she could to keep this b

aby. She steadily decreased the days she worked throughout the autumn and winter until she was down to two evenings a week. Then following her doctor’s instructions, she stopped working completely early in the third trimester.

Troy Joseph Sica was born at 11:32am on April 10, 2002—eyes the color of antique blue moonstones and a thick swatch of nutmeg-brown hair. Even before Pam brought baby home, she prepared Bullet for the new arrival. She had her husband bring the dog the baby blanket that the infant had been swaddled in at the hospital so he would grow comfortable with the new scent.

That first evening, Bullet retrieved the blanket from the study, and dragged it to the pair of cushy dog beds in which he sleeps in the kitchen. And any lingering fear Pam had that Bullet might become jealous of the baby were quickly dispelled when they brought him into the house.

“The baby and the dog bonded right away, “Pam says. “When the baby cried, Bullet would pick up his head to make sure that Troy or I were taking care of him.”

Around five o’clock in the morning on May 1, two weeks after he came home, baby Troy was dozing on his back on the bed in the couple’s bedroom, surrounded by pillows. His dad was in the shower getting ready to go to work and Pam was in the kitchen warming up a bottle. Suddenly Bullet was behind her in the kitchen doorway—barking and hopping and jumping. “And then, “Pam vividly recalls, “he started trying to lead me down the hall to the bedroom.”

At first Pam thought that Bullet had been incontinent and was trying to inform her that he’d had an accident in the bedroom. No hurry. She didn’t follow him immediately. She made a detour to the bathroom to ask Troy to double-check the temperature of the bottle. But Bullet grew even more frantic in his efforts to coax her down the hall—jumping with incr

Finally she followed him, moving with the tired gait of a new mother at five in the morning. When she came to the bedroom door she gasped and dropped the bottle she was carrying. There on the bed was little Troy, just where she’d left him—but his skin had turned an almost neon shade of blue. His body grew limp and a desperate gurgle emanated from his 

She pulled the infant from the bed. “Please, God, don’t take my baby!” she cried and raced into the bathroom, where her husband was finishing his shower. While Troy flipped the child onto his stomach and started patting his back, trying to dislodge whatever was blocking his windpipe, Pam called for help.

Within minutes police were on the scene. And in a stroke of good fortune, Damon alberts, an advanced emergency medical technician lived just around the corner from the Sicas. He and the rest of his ambulance crew arrived at the house shortly thereafter.

The technician’s administered high-concentration oxygen to the infant. Within a minute the blue began to recede from his face and his color returned to normal. He was breathing again on his own. But he was not out of danger. The crew rushed him by ambulance to a hospital. There he stopped breathing once more and had to be resuscitated again.

Later that morning he was transferred to another hospital’s pediatric ICU, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. He spent four days on a ventilator and received two weeks of IV antibiotics to help him fight off the infection. “He’s going to lead a normal, healthy life, as long as he wears his seat belt and doesn’t drink and drive.” Says Dr Thomas, the paediatric cardiologist, with a smile.

 Had Bullet not insisted that Pam drop what she was doing and followe

How did Bullet know the baby was in trouble?

“Dogs are keen observers of body language,” explains Dr Marty Becker, a veterinarian and writer. “They spend hour upon hour studying our every movement, listening to the cadence of our breathing, the very beat of our hearts. I can see that dog watch the absence of movement, fail to hear a breath and know something was wrong. When something is wrong, they immediately go to the leader of the pack for guidance or help. In this case, the leader of Bullet’s pack is Pam.”

And so perhaps the real miracle of this story isn’t Bullet’s comprehension that his new pack mate on the bed was in serious trouble. Rather, the real wonder might be Pam’s faith two years ago that her elderly dog still had a few good years left in him.

“I gave Bullet life and he gave me a life back,” she says.

Article taken from Readers Digest February 2003