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CHAPTER 1

BEVERLI AND PIPER'S STORY

Beverli felt as though her life was charmed and considered herself an incredibly lucky person. The consultancy firm she worked for had just helped London win its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Part of a team of highly skilled professionals, Beverli's job was to oversee and devise practical solutions for matters relating to the potential terrorism that such a prestigious event would attract.

Her area of expertise was security, and in particular the security of the hard and soft rings, the competitive arenas within the Olympic city, and the tagging of athletes to ensure the safety of the world's top sportspeople. As she boarded the Tube train at King's Cross Station in London, it was time to get down to business after the celebratory party the night before. Beverli, full of excitement and anticipation, couldn't wait to get to work on starting a new chapter in her career. As she hopped onto the train at 8.42 a.m., she was already planning the safety measures that she was going to recommend to her bosses that morning.

It was a tight squeeze in the train but somehow Beverli managed to get a seat. Just before the train was due to stop at Russell Square, where she had to get off, she stood up and held on to the metal rail until the train came to a halt. Suddenly, there was an excruciating sound of metal grating against metal as the train screeched to a stop. Beverli was flung forward and hit the pole face-first with such force that it knocked her out.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor. From looking at her watch, she worked out that she had been like that for about twelve and a half minutes. She couldn't hear anything apart from a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

Thick black smoke filled the carriage and she could barely breathe, although she could make out shadowy figures in the train. The high-pitched noise was replaced with people screaming and shouting for help.

'It was chaos,' recalls Beverli. 'People didn't know what had happened, but I did – I realised a bomb had gone off. I'd lived in South Africa, where guerilla warfare was a normal part of life and bombs would go off in public places every day. I knew it was a bomb.'

After the explosion, the lights had gone out and the emergency lights in the train carriage had been activated, but they appeared only faintly because of the thick black smoke billowing everywhere. Beverli got on her hands and knees and crawled along the floor in the direction she thought the doors might be but, as she moved along, she was aware of a warm, spongy feeling in her face and mouth.

'I didn't know it, but there was blood pouring down my face from where I'd hit the metal pole,' says Beverli. 'I had lost most of my teeth and the ones I did have left were on the bottom jaw wedged into my gums. My chest felt like I had been whacked there with a baseball bat several times and the whole left side of my face and body felt as if it was on fire. I was in pain but not as much as you might have expected with such horrific injuries – the adrenalin must have kicked in. The sound of people screaming will live with me forever. Some were badly injured or dying; others were terrified; and others were freaking out because it was so black and smoky down there. It was how I imagined hell.'

With a strength that she didn't know she possessed, Beverli stayed calm and made getting out of the mangled train carriage her focus. She took a woman's hand and they struggled to stand up together. They picked their way through the passengers, trying desperately not to tread on anybody as they brushed past warm bodies – some moving, others slumped against the seats or the carriage walls.

Blood was dripping down Beverli's face like water and, for a moment, she wondered if she was going to die in there, on the day that turned out to be the UK's worst ever terrorist attack: the 7 July 2005 London bombings.

One passenger had found the emergency exit and he pushed it open, so Beverli and a handful of others managed to get out of the carriage and onto the power lines. They had no idea if the tracks were live, but they had to take the chance or they faced being burned alive.

Together the group staggered through the Underground tunnel towards the next station. It was so dark and musty down there that they had to grope their way along the old tiled walls, which felt cold and smooth. The smell was musky like an old nightclub, making Beverli gag as she walked.

The scene when they eventually reached the next station was of utter chaos. There were paramedics, firefighters and police everywhere, helping the injured and dying; terrified people trying to make phone calls or just screaming with fear. It was like a scene out of a movie, only it wasn't a movie – it was all too real.

Beverli managed to get to a hospital while London was on lockdown. A major terrorist cell had planned four separate bombings in the capital within the space of minutes, maiming thousands and killing many. It was the blackest of days for the UK.

The event dramatically changed the course of Beverli's life. 'Up until this moment in my life, I don't know if I had ever felt happier,' she muses. 'My life felt pretty much mapped out and I liked the certainty. I was living in London with my long-term partner Tina in a beautiful house; I had amazing friends and a fabulous job. Life was good and I had such high expectations for my future. As I stood on the King's Cross Station platform that morning, it seemed extra crowded with lots of commuters and tourists going about their business. I'd felt so lucky to be a part of the London life. It was a good one.'

Beverli's recovery was long and slow. Part of her face had been smashed in and she had swallowed toxic chemicals in the tunnel. Additionally, she had suffered a concussion to her head and minor brain damage from hitting the metal pole in the carriage.

"I felt like my life was over

'The brain damage left me with minor memory and speech problems, but the doctors said I should be grateful to have survived at all,' recalls Beverli. 'Over the next few years, I had many painful surgeries to rebuild my face and my mouth. I couldn't work. I couldn't do anything normal any more. I felt like my life was over.'

Beverli suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – for her, this condition was far worse to deal with than the surgeries. For months, she couldn't set foot out of her front door for fear that something would happen to her. She developed survivor's guilt, because she couldn't understand why she had lived when so many others died. Even sleep offered no respite as she experienced horrific dreams in which she relived the bombings.

Beverli underwent a lot of therapy, which was helpful to an extent. However, every time she heard a police or ambulance siren, she would run or hold her head in her hands to drown out the noise because she associated it with that fateful day. If it wasn't for her partner holding her while she screamed and cried all night, she wouldn't have made it through.

'Tina was my rock,' says Beverli. 'She helped me to walk out of the front door again and she was there whenever I needed her – a strong shoulder even though her world had crumbled too.'

In summer 2011, Beverli was still dealing with her PTSD when Tina suggested that they get her a puppy to keep her company while Tina was out at work, as an audiologist at a hospital.

'She hated leaving me in the morning because she didn't know what she was going to come back to,' says Beverli. 'Some days I would be happy and have a hot meal waiting; others she would come home to the house in darkness because I had closed all the curtains to shut the world out.

I was depressed, I know that now. I would stay in bed for hours and hours at a time, never eating, just lying there with my thoughts. There were times when I wanted to die because living was so terrifying for me.'

In the midst of despair came a crucial turning point in Beverli's life. Tina had seen an advert on a pet adoption website looking for people to take in a litter of Chinese Crested Hairless dogs who had been dumped in a woman's garden. Four had been adopted already but the rest needed good homes.

Beverli had already spotted a pup from this litter she thought she liked the look of. However, the woman whose garden the puppies had been dumped in and who was taking care of them in the meantime said that she was difficult and didn't warm to people as quickly as the others so, taking into account Beverli's fragile condition, perhaps she should consider a different dog.

It was a two-hour drive to see the dogs and Beverli tried not to get her hopes up. The moment she clapped eyes on the dog from the picture, though, she knew that this was 'the one'.

'She looked in my direction as soon as we went into the room and I bent down gently to say hello,' Beverli remembers. 'She had just had a bath and she smelt delicious. Her skin was so soft and she looked pretty – her eyes sparkled as she let me pet her. The little dog didn't seem nervous of me at all and, far from backing away and being unsociable, she let me pick her up. Her foster mum gave me a brush and I gently brushed through her thin fur as she sat motionless, staring at me all the time.'

'I can't believe this,' said her foster mum. 'You're the first person she has ever let pet her, let alone sit on their lap. I reckon she has chosen you to be her new mum.'

Beverli took her home that very day, naming her Piper. For almost the entire car ride home, Piper sat on her lap and looked up at her new owner as if she was checking that she was OK. Occasionally she would lick Beverli's nose gently or snuggle asleep as if the pair had known each other for years.

Piper and Beverli became constant companions. Wherever Beverli went, Piper would follow – even to the toilet! It was as if Piper wouldn't allow Beverli out of her sight for a second because the dog knew that she suffered when she was on her own. Even though she still hated to walk out of the front door into the world without Tina, Beverli started to walk Piper. At first, they only made it to the end of their driveway, but then they went down the street and soon they were walking to the park.

It was the knowledge that she had to make the effort for another soul that was the real turning point for Beverli.

'As a responsible person, I knew I had to get myself together to at least walk Piper twice a day, otherwise she would have been miserable,' says Beverli. 'Piper would fetch her leash and then come running to me – the signal that she was ready to go for a walk. I could never resist her huge, brown, faithful eyes, so I would pop my shoes and coat on, and we would venture out together. For the first time in years I didn't think about what might happen if I went out. I had to take care of my girl and that kind of took over my way of thinking. The first few times in the park were undeniably very frightening for me and once I almost had a panic attack. That time I felt as if my heart was going to burst out of my chest and I began to sweat, so Piper jumped up beside me on the park bench where I was sitting and she let me hold her until it passed. She made me feel safer just by being there.'

Piper seemed to have a sixth sense regarding when Beverli needed her. Sometimes when she woke up in the night after yet another horrifically vivid nightmare, Piper would be there to lick her tears and snuggle into bed with her. The days when Beverli closed the curtains and lay in darkness became fewer and further between because having Piper close by eased her black moods. Even on her darkest of days, when she felt sad and alone, Piper would pull the funniest of faces to make Beverli smile through her internal pain. There were times when Beverli couldn't help but burst into laughter whenever Piper was with her, and once she was able to laugh and smile, the dark thoughts miraculously went away. Piper was the perfect distraction and the best antidote for Beverli – far better, in fact, than all the pills she took every day just to get up in the morning.

Over a decade after the terrorist attack that could have killed her, Beverli has improved greatly. Her anxieties, her deep-rooted fears and her nightmares have been reduced. She can walk down the road with Piper and sirens no longer send her into panic mode. When she hears them, she picks Piper up and holds her close to her face until the noise has gone, then she carries on like nothing has happened.

Beverli can't even contemplate what might have happened if she hadn't found Piper. At the very least, she knows that she would still be housebound, unemployed, with an unfulfilled life.

The terrorist attacks would have destroyed her – and probably Tina too. Her new reality is far brighter, as Piper has helped her rebuild her life to such an extent that she believes in her future again.

'I truly believe that Piper chose me – I really didn't pick her,' says Beverli. 'When we met, she knew instinctively that I needed help, that I was a damaged soul in need of a miracle. She is that miracle, and I am so thankful that our paths crossed because she means the world to me. That dog has helped me in more ways than any pills or medicines ever could – she put me on the road to healing and I will be forever grateful to her for that. I may have given her a home but she repaid me more than I could have ever imagined. I am who I am today because of my precious Piper. She's a very special doggy.'

LEE AND HERCULES'S STORY

Lee and his wife Elizabeth weren't exactly looking for a big dog of their own when they entered the Highland County Humane Society's dog shelter in Ohio. They had been helping their friend Tim look for his Jack Russell Terrier, Mimi, who had gone missing when he left his patio doors open. Tim was devastated that his tiny pooch had disappeared so when Lee and Elizabeth heard the news, they wanted to help. The thought of Mimi fending for herself in the countryside where they all lived was terrifying. There were coyotes and wolves in the woods who would have swallowed her right up, so they went from house to house in their neighbourhood looking for her.

When she didn't show up, the three of them split up and visited all the local animal shelters. There was still no sign of Mimi, so Lee and Elizabeth travelled into the next county just in case she had been taken to a shelter further away.

The Highland County dog shelter was full to capacity that day in November 2011. It was heartbreaking to see the dogs cooped up in the tiny pens, all needing homes. Most of them wagged their tails and ran to the front of their cages when the couple stopped by, but one resident caught their eye.

In the biggest cage of all was a St Bernard dog. He was about 45 kg – small for that breed – and his flanks and neck were covered in crusty, red sores. The St Bernard was obviously in some pain as he struggled to get up, but he still managed to greet Lee with a friendly bark and a lick on the hand through the cage's netting.

'What happened to him?' asked Lee.

'Hercules was found a few miles away in the middle of the woods by two hunters,' the shelter volunteer told him. 'He'd been attacked by coyotes and had multiple bite marks all over his body. The hunters couldn't leave him there as he was injured and so thin, so they carried him out of the woods and took him to a vet, where he was treated and then sent to us. The trouble is, he's really too big for us to take care of and he's been in here for too long. We need to get someone to take him on soon with his huge appetite and sizeable medical bills.'

As Lee and Elizabeth looked at Hercules, his bones sticking out all over the place and his sores bleeding, they knew that they couldn't let the handsome dog stay there a moment longer because it was clear he just needed a lot of love and more attention to put him on the road to recovery. Hercules was just two years old and despite all his wounds, he was a stunning looking dog who seemed to have a good attitude towards humans.

'The thought of him being put to sleep was just not an option,' recalls Lee. 'Here was a giant of a dog who was friendly and young, and we knew in our hearts he would make a great, loyal pet to someone. It wasn't fair that his only crime was being unwanted and that his punishment was death. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and there was no hesitation. We agreed to take him home right then and there. At the time we didn't think about how big he was and how he might take some serious training. We just wanted to get him to safety. We left the rescue centre that day not with Mimi but with our own dog, and we vowed to give him the kind of life he deserved. As big animal lovers we have had rescue dogs for years, so we knew what amazing, loving animals they can turn out to be. We were prepared to take the chance with Hercules and we didn't regret it.'

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Excerpted from "My Rescue Dog Rescued Me"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Sharon Ward Keeble.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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