The marshal of the golf course was dying. Then he felt his best friend’s paw

This is a golf story. And a veteran’s story. And a prison story. And a health history. But really, this is a dog story, so let’s start here.

After all, Tommy is a good guy.

Do your three-year-old yellow lab’s wet ears melt first? Or the big ole black snout? Maybe it’s the tail that never came with a key? But there’s no arguing that the ever-knowing, ever-understanding, ever-comforting brown eyes are his conduit to winning a pet on his back. Or under the chin. Or to receive a treatment; Alligator jerky preferred.

The eyes give you that look. You know him. It connects. It connects. Dogs like Tommy never lose. They are always present.

And Hank Ford desperately needed that indivisibility.

Today, either at their home about half an hour north of Denver, or at Hank’s volunteer marshal job nearby Coyote Creek Golf Coursethey both talk. Hank will say words, and Tommy will turn his head and listen. If Hank is stressed, Tommy tries a few moves. There is a dog head shot on the chin. And if that doesn’t work, there’s a dog-to-lap dance. All will eventually be forgotten.

“You just can’t help but lose all your aggression,” Hank said, “when you’ve got a stupid-looking dog looking down on you.”

Tommy is a four-legged wake-up call, then.

In more ways than one.

FOR 20 YEARS, HANK SAID HE WAS AWAKE. On August 1, 1989, he went on active duty with the Marines, serving in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Iraq and missions in the Adriatic Sea. Four years later, after a setback in military personnel, Hank enlisted in the Army, where he served four more years. Beginning in 1997, he worked both inside a prison and with the Army Reserve, which included a return to the Middle East, before retiring in 2009. These are the dates. But this is what it all felt like:

Joy. Always a noise.

Followed by silence.

And a gap. Diagnosed with PTSD, Hank sought adrenaline and even in typically quiet golf, he found it. The rounds went like this: Knock it off, then hit the drinks cart. From time to time, he was asked to leave the club. He said he went on the course but came back “broken”. “And yeah, I mean, alcohol became a good friend,” he said. “You know, I realized I could drink at 8 in the morning and nobody could tell me not to. And it would take your mind off the things you were thinking about.”

There were also fights. One got him the job of volunteer marshal at Coyote Creek; his prison work helped him break up an incident and the course brought him on board. Only, he said, he asked for trouble, not just answered it. “I’d drive around and look for the guy who was carrying a little beer can because we didn’t sell that can. And I’d gotten into it with some drunks where we probably should have called the police department and let them take care of it. But no, I wanted to take care of it.

“So I got to a point where the pro calls me in one day and he says, ‘You know, I think you’re not that good in public.’ And I said, I said, ‘I know, I agree. I agree.’ And I left.

“And now I had nothing to do.”

You know where this is going, of course. This is a dog story, remember.

Hank had initial reservations about the suggestion of a service dog. You want to be strong. But there is also strength in numbers. He repented. Then he was treated, after Tommy, star pupil of Dogs Inc., and his coach came to Colorado just over two years ago.

“The bell rang,” Hank said, “and I opened the door and she was warning me, she goes, I gotta tell you, he’s a big dog, he’s a big dog. And you open the door, and there’s this little Labrador, 60 pounds. Because my dog, my hunting dogs were 100 pounds. They were sitting in the chair and she told me to sit in the chair. said, call his name and I’ll let him off the leash.

“And he just jumped on my lap and started licking me because he’s a licker. I started feeling it right away.”

‘She’ never left. ‘She’ has grown up. Hank, 54, and Tommy go everywhere together. Grocery store. The couch. They watch football; Hank is one Green Bay Packers fan, and Jordan Love Landing passes are announced with his shouts and Tommy’s “zooms”. Eventually, Hank reconnected with Coyote Creek as well. And here you see in full what has happened since Hank and Tommy got together. There is peace. Golfers, Hank said, want to see it. Friends, he said, have never seen him laugh so much.

You then ask:

Did Tommy save Hank’s life? Did he wake her up?

He says yes. He says he did. He says it “turned the lights on” for him.

Then Tommy woke him up again.

HANK WANTED A DOG TO GET HIM OUT OF BED. After he retired, he said he would go to sleep at 2 a.m. and come out at noon. Not more. However, the coach checked his request again. And Hank now understands the doubt.

“Every morning, he’ll jump on me and his elbows will go right into the bladder and he just looks at me like it’s time to get up.”

However, on February 7 this year, this was not enough.

Tommy barked too.

And with paws.

And danced more.

Take it. Up.

“I mean, he was panicking,” Hank said. “And I’m like, leave me alone. I didn’t want to get up. I was really, really tired. And there’s no reason for that.

“And I’m thinking, well, he’s got to go to the bathroom. I’m not going to make him suffer. He’s never, in the time I’ve had him, ever woke me up in the night and said, let’s go out. He never did. He never did. He waits. And then at 6:45, let him go, hey, it’s 7 a.m. out of character. And he’s lying.

“So finally, I get up and stumble to the back door. I open the back door. I’m like, okay. I said, get out. And the term for them to go to the bathroom, you say ‘Busy, busy.’ I’m like, ‘Get out, go busy, busy.’ jump and we’ll go nose to nose. You know, he jumps and punches me in the nose. He jumps down and does it again.

“This time he’s doing it on my chest.”

As Hank began to wake up, he said he felt dizzy. His heart felt “funky”. He touched his carotid—and felt four or five beats at once. He found a VA-issued blood pressure cuff and checked it — 115 over 150 with a heart rate of 171, “and I’m like, ’cause that’s not good, and I said that can’t be right. So I do it again. Same numbers.”

He walked away from Tommy.

He went to the hospital. The participants went berserk, he said. A nurse told him he had AFib, short for atrial fibrillation, which, according to the Mayo Clinic“is an irregular and often very fast heart rate.” The attendants worked to fix it. He called his wife, Mary. She was coming. He also asked her to bring Tommy. She did. At this point in the retelling of the story, Hank drowned.

There was his dog. Again.

“She comes through the door,” Hank said, “he pulls the chain off his hand and jumps on the bed with me and lays his head on my chest. And you can see his head was kind of tilted a little bit. And then he just relaxes.

“He’s like, he was like, you’re where you’re supposed to be.”

Later, a doctor told Hank that because he wasn’t waking up at home, he could have had a stroke or not woken up at all. But because he had gone to the hospital, he was able to leave within a day.

A story, right?

A golf story. And a veteran’s story. And a prison story. And a health history. Everyone is hearing what happened. Friends, neighbors. Local media. National media.

But really, this is a dog story, so let’s end it here.

You are curious:

What would Hank say to Tom?

Something like this.

“I tell Tommy he’s my best friend and I thank him all the time, you know, for being in my life and saving my life. And you could say I’m choking up saying that. But I tell him every day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He just turns my head a little bit like he’s doing now.”

From a chair, Hank beckoned Tommy to jump into his lap. He did.

“Give me a hug. There you go. Come on, buddy.

“Who is your best friend?”

Editor’s Note: To learn more about Dogs Inc., please click here.

“>