Gilbert woman credits her dog for saving her

Apr. 16—Maddie Caballo had been going for quite some time to therapy to deal with the panic attacks and anxiety stemming from childhood trauma.

The Gilbert resident said she had a lot of success connecting with horses in equine-assisted therapy but the animals were too big to have around her all the time. A service dog was the next best thing but she waffled for a couple of year on acquiring one.

"For me it was a big commitment to get a dog — and expensive," Caballo recalled.

Besides, she said, "There's still a negative connotation especially with an invisible disability. It's challenging to have a dog with you when people can't see why you need it."

But six years ago, she welcomed Wilhem, a black Labrador into her home.

"He does grounding," she explained. "It's just very not noticeable. He sits his paw on top of my foot and nudge and be persistent if he senses I'm getting anxious or my breathing is changing. He gets really persistent to get my attention to move somewhere else and change what I am doing."

She said that when she is at her job as a college administrator, she sometimes tries to ignore her disability and work through it, which eventually leads to a worst situation.

Wilhem "is an outside reminder that this isn't going to go well if you keep pushing," she said. "Plus he helps me recognize I have to pause a few minutes and take care of myself and do something different to change the situation and don't get into a bad place."

Wilhem also will act as block, coming between her legs and sitting down to create space between Caballo and other people.

When he's not spending free time to be a "regular dog," his attention is focused entirely on his handler.

Wilhem not only helps put Caballo at ease but she credits him for recently saving her life and her home.

The 53-year old was fast asleep one night in March when Wilhelm began acting up.

"He was coughing," Caballo recalled. "I didn't think much of it. But he started getting on and off the bed. And he started vomiting."

Wilhem also began to nudge Caballo — a lot.

"So he was alerting me and I was still unsure what he wanted," she said. "I thought he had an accident."

Caballo got out of bed and made her way down a hallway where she smelled a smoky odor. She opened her back door to check but didn't smell anything outside.

She decided to grab a drink but the lights in the kitchen wouldn't turn on. She went outside to the circuit box, all the time followed closely by Wilhem.

"He was just staying by my side," she said. "He kept trying to get my attention."

Caballo said she reset her circuit breakers — a number of them had tripped — but the lights still didn't work.

"By chance I opened the garage door and smelled smoke," said Caballo, who immediately grabbed Wilhem's lease, her purse and ran outside where she called 911.

"Fire responded quickly and when they shined a light on the roof smoke was already at the roof at that point," she said. "Fire said five more minutes, it would have taken down the whole structure."

Caballo said she was initially at a loss why none of her smoke detectors worked. She had just replaced them last year.

"I knew that they were all good batteries and new units," she said.

Firefighters told Caballo that with attic fires, smoke won't set off the detectors until the fire breaks through the ceiling and "at that point you lose you structure. But it helps you get out of the house."

Gilbert Fire and Rescue determined that the fire was due to whoever did the wiring had used electrical tape that disintegrated over time, said Caballo, who moved into her home in 2016.

Caballo said although she enforces the training that Wilhem received, including being OK around things like loud fire trucks, she never thought he would alert her to a fire.

"He was always amazing to me," she said. "But this isn't something I trained him for. He was trained to alert me and how to get my attention, which was helpful. You just don't train them for sensing out a fire."

By the way, Caballo rewarded Wilhem for his feat with "too many extra treats and even some steak."