Shelter Dog Sydney Returns A Favor

Delle Norman Griffin loves her pets.

If her dog, cat, or horse needs something for health or happiness, they get it. Her practical, problem-solving nature demands that
whatever she can do for the well-being of those in her family – be they two or four-legged family – she does it.

Griffin was acting as caregiver to her mother six years ago when she spotted Sydney in a list of dogs available for adoption through LifeLine Animal Project. She was immediately intrigued by the photo of the fluffy white mixed-breed who looked like she was laughing at the
camera. Griffin gave it some thought, but hesitated to go any further because she already had a mature golden retriever named Buffy St. Marie who she was completely devoted to.

Still, she never completely forgot about the white dog with the wide smile and would check periodically to see if Sydney was still at LifeLine’s no-kill shelter and still up for adoption. She was.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” Griffin said, “She was so fuzzy and cute. I
kept asking myself: What is she still doing there?”

That year she lost both her beloved Buffy St. Marie and her
mother, burying them on the same day. Griffin was devastated and grieved heavily. Even as much as she loved having pets, she
wasn’t ready to adopt another dog.

Her fiancé, Loren Schmerler, disagreed. He gently prodded her to take another look at the snowy-colored mutt with the hopeful eyes whose
picture Griffin had studied online.

Sydney had come to the rescue by way of DeKalb Animal Services. In 2005 DAS would routinely bring stray dogs to LifeLine’s vets for heartworm testing. Healthy animals would be put up for adoption at the DeKalb shelter while sick dogs were euthanized.

Sydney had heartworms and allergies so severe that she had hematomas in her ears.

She was about 3-years old when she was picked up as a stray
by the county and it looked to be the end of a short and painful life.

LifeLine stepped in to save her. They treated her and put her up for adoption.

Suddenly this dog with no future got two lucky breaks in a row: being saved by LifeLine and being noticed by Griffin.

Once they adopted Sydney, Griffin immediately set about bonding with her new dog, taking her through obedience training rigorous enough that Sydney eventually earned a coveted AKC Canine
Good Citizen certificate.

LifeLine had started treating Sydney’s allergies by sending her to an allergist and feeding only a holistic diet but Griffin soon took her to see the head of Dermatology at Auburn University.

Sydney was found to have over 30 airborne allergies.

It took a year of intense treatment and years of non-steroidal allergy shots and care from a specialist and a holistic vet to get Sydney’s
debilitating allergies under control.

Three years later, Griffin and Schmerler decided to sell the 2-story, 3 bedroom house where they’d lived together for 12 years and opted to
find a one-level ranch somewhere nearby.

They prepped their house for the market, deciding on a few
minor upgrades and to replace some carpet. The combination of repair work and carpet installation revived Sydney’s dormant allergies, so they took the dog and moved into a hotel for 2 days while the work was being done.

On the third day they returned to the house late. Despite some disarray, the work was finished. It was midnight and they were both tired, so they decided to spend the night at home and forsake the hotel. But remembering how the renovations had caused Sydney’s allergies to flare to the point where she was throwing up, they suddenly chose to spend one last night away to make certain any allergens had cleared out or settled. They went back to the hotel, getting to bed after 1:00 a.m.

At 3 a.m. the phone woke Griffin. It was their alarm company saying they had just dispatched a fire truck to the house.

Confused, Griffin sleepily explained that they had just been there and everything was fine.

It wasn’t.

By the time they returned to their block they couldn’t get down the street for all the fire trucks.

There were thirty firemen trying to keep the fire from spreading to nearby houses. One fireman suffered a broken arm fighting the blaze.

They ran down their street and looked for their house but all they could see was flames.

It was a 4-alarm fire. The house burned down in 20 minutes. Nothing was left, not even the chimney.

They were startled to find a chaplain on the scene. The fire had spread so quickly that neighbors, believing Griffen and Schmerler were home
when the inferno broke out, called for clergy.

In shock, they suddenly realized all they had left was Sydney and the few things they had taken to the hotel three days before, Everything else was gone, including a wealth of family heirlooms and personal mementos.

Neither the insurance company nor local investigators ever found the origin of the blaze.

Griffin understands how differently things would have turned out if they hadn’t left the house that night due to their rescued pet’s allergies.

She calls Sydney her angel and insists they owe their lives to her.

When asked about her innermost feelings about how the tragedy unfolded, she said, “Dog spelled backwards is God. That sums it up for me.”