How Jasper the Dog Saved Mary

Happy dog ​​stories are not uncommon, but what about stories where a dog saves its owner? A little unusual, right? This is what happened to Mary McKnight, who was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety disorder. Neither the medications nor the therapy sessions prescribed by her doctor helped her, and her condition continued to worsen. Ultimately, she did not have the strength to leave the house, sometimes for several months at a time.

“I didn’t even know I had a tree in my yard that blooms in spring,” she says. “So rarely did I go outside.”

In a last attempt to alleviate her condition and find stability, she decided to adopt a dog. Mary visited the Seattle Humane Society, an animal welfare organization and partner of Hill’s Food, Shelter & Love. When an employee brought an eight-year-old black Labrador mix named Jasper into the room, the dog simply sat next to her. And he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to play. He didn’t want food. He didn’t want to sniff the room.

He just wanted to be near her.

Mary immediately realized that she simply had to take him home. “He never left my side,” she recalls. “He just sat there and kind of said, ‘OK. Let’s go home!”.

Later, she learned that Jasper was given to an orphanage by a family that was going through a difficult divorce. He needed daily walks, and for this he needed Mary to go outside with him. And gradually, thanks to this cheerful Labrador, she began to return to life – just what she needed.

Besides, she was in for a pleasant surprise: when she had her usual paralyzing panic attacks, Jasper licked her, lay on her, whined and tried in many ways to get her attention. “He kind of felt it, like he knew I needed him,” Mary says. “He brought me back to life.”

Through her experience with Jasper, she decided to train him as a human help dog. Then you could take it with you everywhere – on buses, to shops and even to crowded restaurants.

This relationship has benefited both. The experience was so positive and life-changing that Mary decided to devote herself to training assistance dogs.

Now, more than ten years later, Mary is a nationally certified animal trainer.

Her company, Service Dog Academy, has 115 happy stories to tell. Each of her dogs is trained to help people with diabetes, seizures and even migraines. She is currently in the process of moving the company from Seattle to St. Louis.

Jasper already had gray around his muzzle when she took him in 2005 at the age of eight. He died five years later. His health deteriorated to the point where he could no longer do what he once did for Mary. To give him a rest, Mary adopted an eight-week-old yellow Labrador named Liam into the house and trained him as her new service dog. And while Liam is a wonderful companion, no dog can ever replace Jasper in Mary’s heart.

“I don’t think I saved Jasper,” Mary said. “It was Jasper who saved me.”