Loyal Service Dog Refuses To Leave Mom’s Hospital Room After Saving Her Life

The concept of a service dog may be confusing to those who don’t have one. Sometimes you really need to see these working pups in action to fully understand how necessary and important they are. Take Ruby for example. Ruby is a gray and white Pit Bull/Staffy from Australia who’s also an outstanding service dog. She started training as a therapy dog in 2017, two years after her mom Shauna Darcy adopted her. Ruby’s initial duties were to help Darcy with her anxiety, depression and agoraphobia. Turns out she had a few other tricks up her metaphorical sleeves. Darcy told The Dodo how Ruby started to pick up on changes in her heart rate and alert her about it. “While she was training to be a service dog I noticed that she started picking up on changes in my heart rate and would act funny, for example, paw at me, try to get my attention, get on top of me, etc.” Darcy responded to Ruby’s cues and went to see the doctor. There, she learned about health issues she had no idea she had before, including a rare heart condition vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Ruby detected something wrong with Darcy’s heart before she could. This sort of work would become Ruby’s focus. She continued to train a...