By George Abraham
George Abraham
December 3, 2023 was a typical morning. I was outside in our yard doing some work. Our Landseer Newfoundlands— Oakley, 6 1/2, and Kelby, our year-old puppy—played, ate breakfast, and then Oakley laid down on her cooling mat. It was just before noon. Everything seemed normal. Then I heard Kate, my wife, screaming in a voice I had never heard from her before. I ran inside.
Kate was beside Oakley, who was lying on the floor, unresponsive. I did CPR, but it was futile. She was gone.
For more than six years this 100-pound black and white beauty was the center of our lives. She led us into a new world, a world in which highly trained canines work side by side with human lifeguards to prevent drownings.
George Abraham
When we brought Oakley home, we knew nothing about water rescue, and never dreamed where this small ball of black and white fluff would take us. Kate and I had a house on a small private lake in Pennsylvania and thought it would be nice to have a pet dog who enjoyed swimming. We were just normal people.
We picked the Newfoundland breed, one thing led to another, and soon we were at a three-day training camp in Boston run by the The American Academy of Canine Water Rescue with trainers from the Italian School of Water Rescue Dogs, in Milan, Italy. I knew about the Italian organization because its founder, Italian Naval Commander Ferruccio Pilenga, and his Newf, Reef, had been featured in Superpower Dogs, a movie Kate and I had recently watched. They have trained about 400 working teams over the years.
There were 20 dogs at the camp. At the end of the weekend, the trainers from the Italian school approached us and invited us to bring Oakley to Italy to train. “We think your dog is really special,” one of the trainers said. To me, it was as if you showed up with your child to a basketball game and Michael Jordan comes over and says, ‘Hey, your kid is fantastic at basketball. You need to pursue this.’
George Abraham
COVID delayed our trip to Milan, and at that point, we realized we could go one of two ways. Either we were going to be done with water rescue training or we were going to make it happen. It was COVID lockdown, not much else to do. We decided, ‘let’s dive in, feet first.’
Kate and I got formal rescue training and lifeguard certification, essential for the human members of the team. Finally, in September 2021, we made it to Italy. We took the most advanced courses the school offered. Oakley excelled in them all.
When we returned home, we turned our attention to the helicopter jump, in which the dogs leap from a hovering helicopter. Learning foundation skills, like loading and unloading dogs while the helicopter is running and flying with the helicopter doors on and off, took two years. A training facility in Florida worked with us to achieve the milestone of an actual jump. It was the culmination of four and a half years of training. Oakley loved every minute of it.
She performed her first water rescue while she was still learning. We were running training exercises when a nearby swimmer had an asthma attack. Oakley swam over and towed her to safety.
George Abraham
Her skills did not end at the water’s edge. She was a task-trained service dog who helped Kate cope with MS. In her spare time, she loved to wear costumes and pull holiday wagons. She climbed ladders, something I never taught her. She got onto playground swings. There seemed to be nothing she couldn’t do.
Thousands of people—in our area and around the world—knew her from following her training and adventures on our active social media accounts. And then she was gone.
Gabriele Mansi-GM Photography
Photo courtesy of Gabriele Mansi-GM Photography
As Oaks aged, I had mentally prepared myself that we might lose her early— Newfs have short lifespans and as a working dog, I knew anything could happen at any time.
So we got a new pup, Kelby. She came to live with us at 10 weeks old, when Oaks was around 5 1/2. We started training immediately with the building blocks for everything else—basic obedience. Kelby was learning fast, and many of the lessons came from Oakley.
When Oakley died, once we came to our senses, we let Kelby see and smell her. A couple of times, she went over and took a toy to Oaks, trying to entice her to play. By the end of the day, I think she figured it out. She would go over and smell around Oakley’s snout. And I think she realized that Oakley was not breathing.
The next morning, Kelby and I got up at dawn and took a hike in the state forest. We went to see the sunrise at an overlook. In hindsight, that was my way of grieving, of getting past Oakley. I was still doing Oakley things, but without Oakley, if that makes sense.
Kate and I thought about stopping, just raising Kelby as a pet. But it wouldn’t have been fair to Kelby if we just stopped everything. Kelby’s whole life is us. And if we did anything other than push forward and show her that her life is not changing, it would’ve been wrong.
We came to terms with our loss and focused on the puppy.
Everything was peaking at that point, when Kelby was about a year old. She was preparing to enter the world of work, and we had to keep up with her training.
Another thing that spurred us to continue was the social media community. We started hearing from Oakley’s followers on Facebook and Instagram and people who started water-rescue work because of her. Everyone was looking to us as to what’s next—what are you going to do?
What started off as something personal for Kate, Oakley, and me grew into something so much larger. Three people in the United States have gone to Italy, took the training, and became instructors. We have students all over the United States.
If Kate and I dropped out, who would continue the work?
George Abraham
Within 24 hours, I announced Oakley’s passing on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. We had been very active in chronicling our journey, both her education and ours.
As much as we put our time and effort into social media, social media came back and helped us through our most difficult, darkest days.
So many people contacted us with so many stories we had never heard before, incredible stories of how Oakley helped them through hard moments in their lives.
Many reached out to us, saying they were sending donations to AKC and the Newfoundland Club of America and other working dog organizations.
A close friend said she thought it was wonderful that Oakley’s fans were making donations to these organizations, but the money was going to go unnoticed as something to commemorate her.
“Let’s do something in memoriam for Oakley,” she suggested. We ended up starting a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising money to buy a rescue boat in Oakley’s honor. The next thing we knew, Oakley fans had pledged $10,000. Most of them knew Oakley only from social media. Some donations were as small as $2; others were as much as a thousand. Companies we had worked with heard our story and helped by offering discounts on their products. Sea Eagle Boats provided the boat and we bought the motors with the donation money. We named the boat “4 Oaks.”
George Abraham
On Memorial Day 2024—a little more than six months after Oaks passed—we were patrolling the lake at Beltzville State Park, in Lehighton, Pennsylvania.
It was the first day out for Kelby, her first real-life assignment. She was only 17 months old.
It was clear that Oakley passed her skills, in obedience and water rescue, to the puppy, 110 percent. I never like to compare Kelby to Oakley and this is not putting Oakley down in any way. We didn’t start training Oakley in water rescue until she was almost 2, and she was 4 before she was fully proficient. Right now, in water rescue, Kelby, who started water rescue training at 6 months, is where Oakley was at Oakley’s peak.
Since COVID, there have been no lifeguards at Beltzville so it’s swim at your own risk. I don’t know exactly how many people were there, but the park capacity is 5,000. It was jammed.
Despite the crowds, the day was pretty uneventful—until 3 o’clock.
George Abraham
A jet ski flipped over, tossing the two men on the craft into the deepest water. One of the men did not know how to swim.
I managed to help the driver get back on the jet ski and we were able to nurse it back to the boat launch. But for the guy who couldn’t swim, we needed canine power.
I was in the water already and I called Kelby. She flew off the boat. All I saw were those two big paws out in front of her, coming toward me. Then she splashed down and was next to me instantly. I had her go around the swimmer in distress. She pulled in front of him, waited for him to grab hold, and that was pretty much it. She knew what her job was.
Once he was in tow, she swam straight to the boat, delivered him to us, and got out of the way. She didn’t try to climb up on the boat on her own. She stayed out of the way while we were loading the swimmer.
An untrained dog would not have known to do that. Kelby knows her job. She knows what has to happen. It was only after we got the distressed swimmer on the boat that Kelby came back. She swam parallel to the boat just as we taught her. We lifted her onto the boat and then I was able to get myself onto the boat. Once we were all on the boat, we attended to the swimmer.
And then we proceeded back to shore. It was textbook, exactly how we teach it and how we write it up.
George Abraham
A million things could have gone wrong. The dog could have headed back to the beach instead of to the swimmer, anything.
And she did her job exactly as Oakley would have, and did in the past, without hesitation, without any fear, and without a hint of panic in the water. You can’t ask better than that from any human or any animal. She was the utmost professional when it was her time to do her job. It felt like Oakley was with us.
The post Newfoundland ‘Oakley’ Was a Once-in-a-Lifetime Water Rescue Dog appeared first on American Kennel Club.
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George Abraham
December 3, 2023 was a typical morning. I was outside in our yard doing some work. Our Landseer Newfoundlands— Oakley, 6 1/2, and Kelby, our year-old puppy—played, ate breakfast, and then Oakley laid down on her cooling mat. It was just before noon. Everything seemed normal. Then I heard Kate, my wife, screaming in a voice I had never heard from her before. I ran inside.
Kate was beside Oakley, who was lying on the floor, unresponsive. I did CPR, but it was futile. She was gone.
For more than six years this 100-pound black and white beauty was the center of our lives. She led us into a new world, a world in which highly trained canines work side by side with human lifeguards to prevent drownings.
George Abraham
Introduction Into Water Rescue
When we brought Oakley home, we knew nothing about water rescue, and never dreamed where this small ball of black and white fluff would take us. Kate and I had a house on a small private lake in Pennsylvania and thought it would be nice to have a pet dog who enjoyed swimming. We were just normal people.
We picked the Newfoundland breed, one thing led to another, and soon we were at a three-day training camp in Boston run by the The American Academy of Canine Water Rescue with trainers from the Italian School of Water Rescue Dogs, in Milan, Italy. I knew about the Italian organization because its founder, Italian Naval Commander Ferruccio Pilenga, and his Newf, Reef, had been featured in Superpower Dogs, a movie Kate and I had recently watched. They have trained about 400 working teams over the years.
There were 20 dogs at the camp. At the end of the weekend, the trainers from the Italian school approached us and invited us to bring Oakley to Italy to train. “We think your dog is really special,” one of the trainers said. To me, it was as if you showed up with your child to a basketball game and Michael Jordan comes over and says, ‘Hey, your kid is fantastic at basketball. You need to pursue this.’
Big Splash
George Abraham
COVID delayed our trip to Milan, and at that point, we realized we could go one of two ways. Either we were going to be done with water rescue training or we were going to make it happen. It was COVID lockdown, not much else to do. We decided, ‘let’s dive in, feet first.’
Kate and I got formal rescue training and lifeguard certification, essential for the human members of the team. Finally, in September 2021, we made it to Italy. We took the most advanced courses the school offered. Oakley excelled in them all.
When we returned home, we turned our attention to the helicopter jump, in which the dogs leap from a hovering helicopter. Learning foundation skills, like loading and unloading dogs while the helicopter is running and flying with the helicopter doors on and off, took two years. A training facility in Florida worked with us to achieve the milestone of an actual jump. It was the culmination of four and a half years of training. Oakley loved every minute of it.
She performed her first water rescue while she was still learning. We were running training exercises when a nearby swimmer had an asthma attack. Oakley swam over and towed her to safety.
George Abraham
Her skills did not end at the water’s edge. She was a task-trained service dog who helped Kate cope with MS. In her spare time, she loved to wear costumes and pull holiday wagons. She climbed ladders, something I never taught her. She got onto playground swings. There seemed to be nothing she couldn’t do.
Thousands of people—in our area and around the world—knew her from following her training and adventures on our active social media accounts. And then she was gone.
So We Took a Hike
Gabriele Mansi-GM Photography
Photo courtesy of Gabriele Mansi-GM Photography
As Oaks aged, I had mentally prepared myself that we might lose her early— Newfs have short lifespans and as a working dog, I knew anything could happen at any time.
So we got a new pup, Kelby. She came to live with us at 10 weeks old, when Oaks was around 5 1/2. We started training immediately with the building blocks for everything else—basic obedience. Kelby was learning fast, and many of the lessons came from Oakley.
When Oakley died, once we came to our senses, we let Kelby see and smell her. A couple of times, she went over and took a toy to Oaks, trying to entice her to play. By the end of the day, I think she figured it out. She would go over and smell around Oakley’s snout. And I think she realized that Oakley was not breathing.
The next morning, Kelby and I got up at dawn and took a hike in the state forest. We went to see the sunrise at an overlook. In hindsight, that was my way of grieving, of getting past Oakley. I was still doing Oakley things, but without Oakley, if that makes sense.
Kate and I thought about stopping, just raising Kelby as a pet. But it wouldn’t have been fair to Kelby if we just stopped everything. Kelby’s whole life is us. And if we did anything other than push forward and show her that her life is not changing, it would’ve been wrong.
We came to terms with our loss and focused on the puppy.
Everything was peaking at that point, when Kelby was about a year old. She was preparing to enter the world of work, and we had to keep up with her training.
Another thing that spurred us to continue was the social media community. We started hearing from Oakley’s followers on Facebook and Instagram and people who started water-rescue work because of her. Everyone was looking to us as to what’s next—what are you going to do?
What started off as something personal for Kate, Oakley, and me grew into something so much larger. Three people in the United States have gone to Italy, took the training, and became instructors. We have students all over the United States.
If Kate and I dropped out, who would continue the work?
George Abraham
Within 24 hours, I announced Oakley’s passing on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. We had been very active in chronicling our journey, both her education and ours.
As much as we put our time and effort into social media, social media came back and helped us through our most difficult, darkest days.
So many people contacted us with so many stories we had never heard before, incredible stories of how Oakley helped them through hard moments in their lives.
Many reached out to us, saying they were sending donations to AKC and the Newfoundland Club of America and other working dog organizations.
A close friend said she thought it was wonderful that Oakley’s fans were making donations to these organizations, but the money was going to go unnoticed as something to commemorate her.
“Let’s do something in memoriam for Oakley,” she suggested. We ended up starting a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising money to buy a rescue boat in Oakley’s honor. The next thing we knew, Oakley fans had pledged $10,000. Most of them knew Oakley only from social media. Some donations were as small as $2; others were as much as a thousand. Companies we had worked with heard our story and helped by offering discounts on their products. Sea Eagle Boats provided the boat and we bought the motors with the donation money. We named the boat “4 Oaks.”
George Abraham
Maiden Voyage
On Memorial Day 2024—a little more than six months after Oaks passed—we were patrolling the lake at Beltzville State Park, in Lehighton, Pennsylvania.
It was the first day out for Kelby, her first real-life assignment. She was only 17 months old.
It was clear that Oakley passed her skills, in obedience and water rescue, to the puppy, 110 percent. I never like to compare Kelby to Oakley and this is not putting Oakley down in any way. We didn’t start training Oakley in water rescue until she was almost 2, and she was 4 before she was fully proficient. Right now, in water rescue, Kelby, who started water rescue training at 6 months, is where Oakley was at Oakley’s peak.
Since COVID, there have been no lifeguards at Beltzville so it’s swim at your own risk. I don’t know exactly how many people were there, but the park capacity is 5,000. It was jammed.
Despite the crowds, the day was pretty uneventful—until 3 o’clock.
George Abraham
A jet ski flipped over, tossing the two men on the craft into the deepest water. One of the men did not know how to swim.
I managed to help the driver get back on the jet ski and we were able to nurse it back to the boat launch. But for the guy who couldn’t swim, we needed canine power.
I was in the water already and I called Kelby. She flew off the boat. All I saw were those two big paws out in front of her, coming toward me. Then she splashed down and was next to me instantly. I had her go around the swimmer in distress. She pulled in front of him, waited for him to grab hold, and that was pretty much it. She knew what her job was.
Once he was in tow, she swam straight to the boat, delivered him to us, and got out of the way. She didn’t try to climb up on the boat on her own. She stayed out of the way while we were loading the swimmer.
An untrained dog would not have known to do that. Kelby knows her job. She knows what has to happen. It was only after we got the distressed swimmer on the boat that Kelby came back. She swam parallel to the boat just as we taught her. We lifted her onto the boat and then I was able to get myself onto the boat. Once we were all on the boat, we attended to the swimmer.
And then we proceeded back to shore. It was textbook, exactly how we teach it and how we write it up.
George Abraham
A million things could have gone wrong. The dog could have headed back to the beach instead of to the swimmer, anything.
And she did her job exactly as Oakley would have, and did in the past, without hesitation, without any fear, and without a hint of panic in the water. You can’t ask better than that from any human or any animal. She was the utmost professional when it was her time to do her job. It felt like Oakley was with us.
The post Newfoundland ‘Oakley’ Was a Once-in-a-Lifetime Water Rescue Dog appeared first on American Kennel Club.
Read more...
