One night, a dog climbed over two tall fences, crossed a busy highway in the dark, walked through the automatic doors of a nursing home, curled up on a couch in the lobby, and went to sleep.
A surprised nurse found him there the next morning and called the Antrim County Animal Control, from whose shelter the dog had escaped the night before.
This mutt had no known identity or history. The shelter staff had given him the name “Scout.” The staff knew, just from the way Scout carried himself, that he had been abused. Someone had shot him with BBs or birdshot; his jowl still had the small, round pellets embedded in it.
The sheriff came and took him back to the shelter. A few nights later, Scout escaped again, came back to the nursing home, and slept on the same couch. He had again scaled a 10-foot chain-link fence, then a 6-foot solid privacy fence, crossed a highway without getting run over, entered the front door unnoticed, and made himself at home for the night. Another call, and back to the shelter went Scout.
But eventually we all yield to what cannot be changed, and when, two days later, Scout was back on the couch for the third time, the staff decided that Meadow Brook Medical Care Facility, Traverse City, Michigan, should have a dog.
Meadow Brook is an 82-bed facility that cares mostly for seniors, some of whom have terminal illnesses or dementia, or nobody to look after them, or nowhere else to go. Scout decided that this place was his home.
“I’m a person who looks at outward signs, and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” said Marna Robertson, the nursing home’s administrator. “He did that one time, two times, three times, and obviously that’s something that you should pay attention to. And I asked the staff: ‘Well, he wants to be here. Would anybody like to have a dog?’”
So it was decided that the nursing home should have a pet, and the residents were delighted.
“I think it reminds them of being home,” said Rhonda Thomczak, of the facility’s “Glacier Hill” sub-unit. “When you’re home you have your pets, but you don’t get to have that here. Having a dog around makes it feel like home.”
Scout has free rein at Glacier Hill, which houses about 20 seniors. He wanders the halls at will, lies down wherever he wishes, and visits residents whenever he feels the need. Scout learned how to get into their rooms by using his paw to pull down on door handles. He also knows which residents keep dog biscuits in their walkers.
“To each and every one of them, it’s their dog,” said Jenni Martinek, the nursing home’s household coordinator, in whose office Scout has his bed and his toys.
In February, 2023, Scout was named Resident of the Month. “We woof you!” said the poster announcing the honor, written by the staff. “Thank you for adopting us!”
It was just after lunch on a summer weekday, and Scout was making his rounds to see his favorite residents. He visited Butch Craig’s room, where the 80-year-old creates arts and crafts that are displayed along his windowsill. Scout comes here for biscuits, which he then buries in Craig’s chair for later use.
Scout next visited Bob Shumaker, 84, whose room he often enters in the middle of the night to wake Bob by pressing his wet snout against his face. It was startling at first, but now Shumaker likes it; he pretends to be asleep while Scout repeats the snout-press until Shumaker “awakens” and gives him a biscuit.
Scout made his way to the living room, just outside the dining area, where he found Shumaker’s sister, Shirley Sawyer, 82, who now lives under the same roof as her brother just as when they were children. Her face lit up when she saw him. “He’ll always let you pet him and lets you talk to him if you need someone to talk to,” she said, petting the dog. “It’s very nice.”
“He’s always watching, making sure everybody’s okay,” Martinek said. “If somebody is in the process [of dying], he’s in and out of the room, checking on them. He’ll even want to climb in bed with them.”
“He can sense that,” added Stephanie Elsey, the facility’s clinical care coordinator. “We’ve had a few in the past whose room he won’t leave. We had a resident that when he was passing away, Scout wouldn’t leave his room. He makes a good nursing home dog. He knows his job and he’s good at what he does.”
Martinek once took Scout home with her, on a night the facility was to be holding a disaster drill with loud alarm noises that she thought would scare the dog. “I thought he’d climb in bed with me and sleep, but he laid in front of my bedroom door, one eye open, watching to make sure I was safe all night long, because he was protecting me,” she said. “He was so exhausted by the time he came back here [to the nursing home].”
A visitor rang the doorbell. Scout headed to the door, barked a few times and sat there waiting to see who was there. “He just kind of knows who belongs and who doesn’t,” Martinek said. “So if the doorbell rings, he barks to let them know he’s guarding.”
“I think he knows that this is his home and he is all of ours, so that gives him a sense of security,” Thomczak said. “And I think he just wants to protect that.”
Nobody knows why Scout wanted to be at that particular nursing home, wanted it so badly that he escaped the shelter three times to come to the same couch at the nursing home. “You know, it’s really hard to say,” Robertson said. “Maybe he felt like it was a safe environment. He certainly has a penchant for the elders. He’s very in tune with what they need, especially our very vulnerable population. If they have dementia or if they’re dying, he knows that, and he will go and be with them and comfort them. He must’ve just felt like he needed to be here.”
I think I know why Scout did what he did. It is a God thing. It is God showing us His love for us through the animals he has created.
How could Scout have known that there was a group of old people down the road whom he should go live with and take care of, and who would love and care for him in return? There is no natural explanation for that; it is a God thing, it is the Spirit of God motivating an animal to show God’s love for us. It is a reflection of the type of spiritual relationship God wants to have with each one of us.
Does God work through animals? Scripture tells us that indeed He does. Balaam and the donkey comes to mind. (Numb. 22) But there is also Jonah and the whale, Daniel in the lion’s den, and many other such stories. These days, usually, God sends us His creatures to care for and love so that, in loving and caring for the creatures he has sent us, we learn something about God and how He loves and cares for us.
There is a whole genre of Tik Tok videos (if you see something you like, Tik Tok gives you more of the same—which can be good or bad depending upon what you like) in which a wild animal approaches a human being, urgently trying to get the person’s attention, and when the person follows the animal he discovers the animal’s offspring (or maybe just another member of the herd), trapped, stuck, or otherwise imperiled. The human gathers the proper tools, equipment, and helpers, rescues the animal(s), and a heartwarming video is produced. Again, I’ve seen several of these.
What is the lesson here? If even a wild animal has sense enough to seek help from a higher being to rescue her offspring, how foolish are humans who do not seek the Lord in prayer, and lay all of their problems at His feet?
Yes, nature is still marred by sin and the Fall, which is seen both in how some humans treat animals, and in how some animals attack humans. We await the eschaton for this all to be put right. But in the meantime, I am amazed by, and thankful for, God’s grace to us through animals!
“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all” —C. Frances Alexander, 1848