Introduction to Kayla

This is Kayla Marie Griffiths. She is also known as the great whitefang, the blueberry girl, and the happy banana butt. Lately she hasn't been so happy. Shortly after this photo, Kayla's energy began to decline and she seemed reluctant to play. It took two years of visits to the vets, a scad if misdiagnoses, and finally an acute injury to reveal the underlying problem: chronic degeneration of her knees, the cranial cruciate ligaments to be specific. Here Kayla will tell her story with occassional interjections from me.

Bringing Kayla Home:

I had read the books and began her training right away. We'd always had poorly trained dogs in my childhood home, and I wanted to be sure Kayla was welcomed everywhere I was. I knew a couple of people with PAWS dogs, and I decided to do some initial, but informal, PAWS training to improve socialbilty. Consistency. Not giving in to little fuzzy cuteness, I warned myself well. I put my little 7-lb white fur ball on the screened in porch and waited for the remaining fleas to fall off after her capstar treatment. I didn't want to bring the fleas into the house to affect my cat. Kayla, having had a very stressful afternoon, looked around at the cement and went number 2. I took the pile and her out to the grass and told her "NO." "Potty outside." I felt a little guilty scolding her when she'd only been home for four or five minutes, but I held firm. She looked at the pile and the grass and then at me, then back at it, then back at me. Then she walked away. Every other accident afterwards was left directly in front of the door, usuallly while asking to be let out. She was simply amazing.

Living indoors was new to Kayla. All of her 7 weeks of life had been spent in a cage in a field on a farm. She was quite apprehensive at first. The cat, Sierra, who outweighed Kayla for a week or two, kept a strong red rapberry on her little lab nose for months to come, and Kayla seemed to always be looking to the human with fear and anticipation-- always wanting to serve, but not sure what to do.

She watched from under the couch and we began training sessions each morning and evening, before and after work. When I took her to sign up for obedience classes at 4 months, she already knew all of the commands on the list. She was, in short, amazing. At first, Kayla cried quite a bit in the evenings and the afternoon. It seemed nothing could comfort her. As the worms cleared her system I was unable to determine what else might have her so sad. Finally, I got an idea. I had hand rasied my cat from 2 days old, so I went to the store and got a puppy bottle and some puppy milk. I covered the rubber nipple with sock cloth, and put it in Kaylas mouth. She sucked and sucked and sucked that bottle dry. Then, as she fell asleep, she reached her paw out to me, closed her eyes, and dropped the bottle. She never had the mysterious crying again. I think she was just homesick. From then on, we became inseparable. I got a full time job with benefits and decided to stay in the town of my graduate program.

Kayla made a hit with everyone. When hiking with my then husband when he fell in a rocky falls area, she did a military crawl under his armpit and lifted him to a sitting position to help him up. She has pulled wheelchairs and has sat with disabled kids at the park. At the beach, she insists I check on every child lying--perhaps too still-- in the water. She is the guardian of the world. She has comforted me through four deaths of close friends and relatives and through my very difficult divorce. When my aunt was in hospice, Kayla sat beside her bed, screening visitors and entertaining her energetic terrier while the family and nurses came and went. She just knew how to be out of the way and who to greet and who to leave be. Even early on, when my aunt was on chemotherapy, Kayla spent our visits sitting at her feet, creating a circle of calm and protection. At every turn she has amazed me.

My ex, who didn't even like dogs before he met Kayla, said she was meant to be somebody's guide dog or rescue dog. We thought about getting her formally trained for rescue, but when we read about the 9/11 dogs, we decided her sweet temperment couldn't cope for long with not finding people in a real crisis. She has worked informally with ill and disabled people, and I always planned when she was a bit older to have her trained for animal therapy at a children's hospital or home for the elderly, or both. After her surgery, I think she'll be even more inspirational for children dealing with injury trauma


The Injury:

This last Christmas what had been a chronic and intermittent problem of lameness with her back lages became critical. She ruptured both of her cranial cruciate ligaments in her hind knees. She is scheduled for surgery for the first knee in late January. This is her story.