This is a golf story. And a veteran’s story. And a prison story. And a health story. But really, this is a dog story, so let’s start there.
After all, Tommy’s a good boy.
Do the floppy ears of the three-year-old yellow lab melt you first? Or the big ole black snout? Maybe it’s the tail that never came with an off switch? But there’s no arguing that the always knowing, always understanding, always comforting brown eyes are his conduit to earning a pet on the back. Or under the chin. Or to getting a treat; alligator jerky is preferred.
The eyes give you that look. You know the one. It connects. It binds. Doggos like Tommy never stray. They’re always present.
And Hank Ford was desperately in need of that inseparability.
Today, be it at their home about a half-hour north of Denver, or at Hank’s volunteer marshal job at nearby Coyote Creek Golf Course, the two talk. Hank will say words, and Tommy will head-turn and listen. If Hank is stressed, Tommy tries a pair of moves. There’s a dog-head-into-chin shove. And if that doesn’t work, there’s a dog-into-lap jump. All will eventually be forgotten.
“You just can’t help but lose all the aggression that you got,” Hank said, “when you got a goofy-looking dog looking down at you.”
Tommy is a four-legged wake-up call, then.
In more ways than one.
Hank Ford and Tommy, his three-year-old yellow lab.
Dogs Inc
FOR 20 YEARS, HANK SAID HE WAS AWAKE. On Aug. 1, 1989, he went on active duty with the Marines, serving in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Iraq, and on missions in the Adriatic Sea. Four years later, following a military personnel drawback, Hank enlisted in the Army, where he served another four years. Starting in 1997, he worked both inside a prison and with the Army Reserve, which included a return to the Middle East, before retiring in 2009. Those are the dates. But this is what all of that felt like:
Buzz. Always a buzz.
Followed by silence.
And a void. Diagnosed with PTSD, Hank searched for adrenaline, and even in typically calm golf, he found it. Rounds went like this: Tee off, then hit the beverage cart. Occasionally, he was asked to leave the clubhouse. He said he walked to the course, but he walked back “smashed.” “And yeah, I mean, alcohol became a good friend,” he said. “You know, I realized that I could drink at 8 o’clock in the morning and nobody could tell me not to do it. And it would kind of wash out your mind of things that you were thinking about.”
There were fights, too. One earned him the job as a volunteer marshal at Coyote Creek; his work in the prison helped him break up an incident, and the course brought him aboard. Only, he said he sought trouble, not just responded to it. “I would drive around and I’d look for the guy that was carrying a small can of beer because we didn’t sell that can. And I’d gotten into it with a few drunks where maybe we should have called the police department and let them take care of it. But no, I wanted to take care of it.
“So it got to a point where the pro called me in one day and he goes, ‘You know, I think that you’re not doing so great in public.’ And I told him, I said, ‘You know, I agree. I agree.’ And I walked away.
“And now I really had nothing to do.”
You know where this is going, of course. This is a dog story, remember.
Hank had initial reservations about the suggestion of a service dog. You want to be strong. But there is strength in numbers, too. He relented. Then he was tackled, after Tommy, star pupil of Dogs Inc., and his trainer came to Colorado just over two years ago.
“Doorbell rang,” Hank said, “and I opened the door and she’s warning me, she goes, I got to tell you, he’s a big dog, he’s a big dog. And open the door, and here’s this little, 60-pound Labrador. Because my dog, my hunting dogs were 100 pounds. They were big. And she told me to sit down in the chair. I sit down in the chair and she said, call his name and I’m going to let go of his leash.
“And he just jumped in my lap and just started licking me because he’s a licker. I started to feel it right away.”
‘It’ has never left. ‘It’ has grown. Hank, 54, and Tommy go everywhere together. Grocery store. The couch. They watch football; Hank is a Green Bay Packers fan, and Jordan Love touchdown passes are announced with his screams and Tommy’s “zoomies.” Eventually, Hank reconnected with Coyote Creek, too. And there you see fully what’s happened since Hank and Tommy came together. There’s peace. Golfers, Hank said, want to see him. Friends, he said, have never seen him laugh this much.
You ask then:
Did Tommy save Hank’s life? Did he wake him up?
He says yes. He says he did. He says he “turned the lights on” for him.
Then Tommy woke him up again.
Hank Ford and Tommy, his three-year-old yellow lab.
Dogs Inc
HANK HAD WANTED A DOG WHO WOULD GET HIM OUT OF BED. After he had retired, he said he’d go to sleep at 2 a.m. and roll out of it at noon. No more. Still, the trainer double-checked his request. And Hank now understands the doubt.
“Every morning, he’ll jump up on me and his elbows go right in the bladder and he just looks at me like, time to get up.”
On Feb. 7 of this year, though, that wasn’t enough.
Tommy also barked.
And pawed.
And jumped more.
Get. Up.
“I mean, he was panicked,” Hank said. “And I’m just like, leave me alone. I did not want to get up. I was really, really tired. And there’s really no reason for it.
“And I’m thinking, well, he’s got to go to the bathroom. I’m not going to make him suffer. He’s never, in the time that I’ve had him, has he ever woke me up at night and said, let’s go outside. He’s never done it. He’s never done it. He waits. And then at 6:45, 7 o’clock, it’s, hey, let’s go. But that morning, it was way out of character. And he doesn’t bark. And he was barking. And he was jumping on me. He was doing everything he could.
“So finally, I get up and I stumble to the back door. I opened the back door. I’m like, all right. I said, go out. And the term for them to go to the bathroom, you say, ‘Busy, busy.’ I’m like, ‘Go outside, go busy, busy.’ He wouldn’t go. And he’s looking at me and then he starts jumping up. And we have this thing when I’ve been gone for a while, he’ll jump up and we’ll go nose to nose. You know, he jumps up and he gives me a nose tap. He jumps down and he does it again.
“This time he’s doing it to my chest.”
As Hank started to wake up, he said he felt dizzy. His heart felt “funky.” He touched his carotid — and felt four or five beats at once. He found a blood pressure cuff given to him by the VA and checked that — 115 over 150 with a heart rate of 171, “and I’m like, whoa because that’s not good, and I said it can’t be right. So I do it again. Same numbers.”
He left Tommy.
He went to the hospital. Attendants freaked out, he said. A nurse told him he had an AFib, short for an atrial fibrillation, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, “is an irregular and often very rapid heart rhythm.” Attendants worked to settle it. He called his wife, Mary. She was coming. He also asked her to bring Tommy. She did. At this point in retelling the story, Hank became choked up.
There was his dog. Again.
“She comes through the door,” Hank said, “he pulls the leash out of her hand and jumps in bed with me and he puts his head on my chest. And you can see his head was kind of tilted a little bit. And then he just kind of relaxes.
“He’s like, it was like, you’re where you need to be.”
Later, a doctor told Hank that because he wasn’t waking up at home, he might have had a stroke or not woken up at all. But because he had gotten to the hospital, he was able to leave in a day.
Some story, right?
A golf story. And a veteran’s story. And a prison story. And a health story. Everyone’s hearing what happened. Friends, neighbors. Local media. National media.
But really, this is a dog story, so let’s end there.
You’re curious:
What would Hank tell Tommy?
Something like this.
“I tell Tommy that he’s my best friend and I thank him all the time, you know, for being in my life and saving my life. And you can tell I’m choking up saying it. But I tell him every day. I do. I do. He just kind of gives me a little head twist like he’s doing right now.”
From a chair, Hank called Tommy to jump up on his lap. He did.
“Give me a hug. There you go. Come on, buddy.
“Who’s your best friend?”
Editor’s note: To learn more about Dogs Inc.,please click here.
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