Служебная собака Франц помогла женщине с ампутацией преодолеть физические ограничения и обрести новую жизнь

As Dana Lawson proudly displays her dog’s puppy scrapbook, tears fill her eyes. It’s filled with photos and notes from women incarcerated at Oregon’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility about how much in meant to raise Franz, a Lab-golden retriever cross, for the nonprofit Canine Companions so that he could go on to become her service dog. “On the back side of each one of the pictures, they each wrote a letter about how Franz impacted them. They would say, ‘I’ve never experienced unconditional love in my entire life before I met Franz,’” she said. “Each one of these is a testament to the ‘Franz Effect.’” Lawson, 53, partnered with Franz, 4, in June of last year — and since then, she’s also experienced the Franz Effect. Due to a rare cancer, the Washington State resident had her right leg amputated above her knee — and due to painful desmoid tumors, she doesn’t use a prosthesis. Instead, she uses forearm crutches to help her walk. “The first thing that people would notice about me if they were going to notice me was my disability,” she recalled. “They were going to ask me, ‘Where’s your leg? How’d you lose your leg? Why don’t you wear a leg?’ Or little kids — which no worries, doesn't bother me, I'm right at their eye level — and they're like, ‘Mommy, mommy, that person doesn't have a leg.’ Well, now? None of that. They don't care about me. I'm just the lady that's attached to the leash with the totally awesome dog.” The totally awesome dog is trained to assist Lawson with physical tasks, such as retrieving her crutches, tugging on straps to open or close doors and carrying leftovers from a restaurant. He can tug the garbage cart, bring wood for the stove in winter, pick up her phone or keys when she’s going through a doorway and hold open the door to a refrigerated section in the grocery store, which often draws a crowd. “Using forearm crutches, you drop things on the ground, you drop your keys when you need to open and close doors. It’s difficult to carry things,” she said. “There's a variety of different physical things because I'm essentially using my hands as my feet now.” Franz also creates a sort of protective bubble around her when they navigate airports and walking paths; people will notice the dog and give them space to move forward without bumping into them, which used to happen when she was solo. Beyond Physical Benefits But Lawson feels Franz’s biggest impact is psychosocial. For instance, she fell and broke her back in January, which was incredibly painful. It would have been easy to just rest in her wheelchair and have someone else walk him. But he’s the impetus that gets her outdoors, where they walk in the woods for at least an hour every day. “He gets me moving and that is so critically important for someone that’s disabled, who lives in a wheelchair, who spends the majority of her time seated and to get me up and moving around, get my lymphatic system moving,” she said. “He's literally medicine for me in that capacity.” They’ve competed in 5Ks together and Lawson thinks a half marathon may be in their future if Franz is up for it. “We'll see what he's up for. I will always take my cues from him just as he takes his cues from me and we will see what the adventure will hold for us as we move ahead,” she said. Lawson, a domestic violence survivor, enjoys exercising in nature with Franz instead of heading to CrossFit classes to work out any pent-up anger and energy, as she did before partnering with the dog. Thanks to the way she and Franz engage with each other, Lawson even “retired” from therapy after many years of talk therapy to help heal from trauma. “About four or five months ago, I finally said to my therapist, ‘I think I'm just coming here to talk to you about what I did this week. I don't think we really need to have these weekly meetings anymore,’” she said. “And I really attribute Franz coming into my life being a huge reason as to why those big shifts have happened to me.” Lawson is helping others, too. A marine biologist before her diagnosis 27 years ago, she’s now a certified trauma professional and nationally certified patient advocate. She founded the nonprofit Unbounded Horizons, which hosts healing retreats for women who have experienced trauma, and co-founded The Desmoid Project, which offers mental health support programs and patient advocacy services for people who are affected by desmoid tumors. For his part, Franz enjoys doggy playdates, playing with Lawson’s cat Kaya (while her other cat Phoebe watches their antics) and catching a Frisbee when not out adventuring. Canine Companions Puppy Raisers She’s incredibly grateful to the volunteers and staff at Canine Companions who raised and trained Franz and said puppy raisers are “angels.” “They’re amazing folks that open their hearts and their homes to these animals knowing that they're not going to have them forever,” she said. “That is altruism to a tee.” Paige Mazzoni, CEO of Canine Companions, a nonprofit that has placed over 8,700 dogs free of charge with adults and children with disabilities since 1975, said there is an urgent need for people in all 50 U.S. states to volunteer as puppy raisers. “Without those puppy raisers, our mission wouldn’t happen,” she said. “Right now there is pretty much a global shortage of volunteerism. And so we really, really need people who are willing to pour their heart and soul into this adorable dog and then give it back to change someone's life.” Volunteer puppy raisers for Canine Companions welcome an 8-week-old puppy into their home and help teach them basic obedience skills and socialize them to a variety of people, animals, noises and situations until they’re 15-18 months old. Along the way, local puppy raisers meet for training classes and group outings. Then the puppies return to Canine Companions for advanced training as service dogs for 6-9 months before partnering with a handler with a disability. People can co-raise a puppy if they’re worried about time or costs, and there are typically people in the Canine Companions community who can take care of the pup if a raiser goes on vacation or has to take a work trip, according to Mazzoni. “That’s one of the powerful things about Canine Companions is — it sounds so corny — but it really is a family and the community really supports each other,” she said. “It's really amazing.” If puppy raising seems daunting, the nonprofit also needs “dog transport volunteers” to drive puppies to their raisers across the country. “Our puppies are all born in California right now and we then have to get them to all 50 states when they’re eight weeks. And most airlines are no longer helping with transporting live animals, so we're having to find ways to get volunteers to say, ‘I'll drive it two hours and get it to the next volunteer,’” she said. “You might have the puppy overnight and then drive it a couple of hours to a next airline hub or to a next drop off person. It's a nice way to meet our dogs, get to know how wonderful and calm they are as dogs and also fun and loving.” Essentially, Canine Companion’s mission is all about the power of the human-animal bond — something evident in the partnership between Franz and Lawson, according to Mazzoni. “This woman is a powerhouse, right? She’s very strong as a person and the dog has helped bring that out,” she said. “The partnership between them continues to give her optimism and the ability to go do things and to continue to expand the breadth of her life and experiences that without the dog would be a lot harder to do.” Lawson wholeheartedly agrees. “People often ask what Franz does for me, but the truth is they should ask who he helps me to become,” she said. “That’s something that's really important because I think so many people when they see Franz and they think about somebody who is so clearly physically disabled as me that they think that everything is a physical relationship that he's doing for me and that's really not what it is. It's like I'm literally becoming a different person. I'm a flower that's opening up my petals again and I'm able to really thrive and he's a part of that process and he's a huge driver of that every day.”