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How one dog and her new owner brought kindness into the lives of many
Gaia is a Husky with a story to tell about how when one life ends, sometimes an even better one begins.
In Dallas, Texas, Gaia’s life was confined to a tiny backyard, because her loyal owner, Sandra, was hospitalized. Sandra’s next door neighbor, Lisa Kanarek, noticed that the nine-year old female looked lonely, so she offered to walk her.
“I walked in and then Gaia came up to me very slowly,” Kanarek recalled. “And then I said, ‘Oh, hi.'”
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One walk turned into three weeks of walks. Then, the question Kanarek wasn’t expecting came from Sandra’s dear friend, Gilda Levy. “Two weeks before Sandra died, [Levy] said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but would you like to take her?’
Kanarek’s response? “Sure. I would love to.”
So, when the time came, Kanarek was summoned to Sandra’s home. The 80-year-old neighbor she barely knew was gone. “She had just died,” Kanarek said. She clipped Gaia’s leash on and walked the husky out of Sandra’s home, and into hers.
And from that moment on, Gaia’s life changed.
Kanarek wanted to get Gaia out more, and she noticed, on walks around the neighborhood, that Gaia was so calm around children. So, she and Gaia enrolled in, and passed, a pet therapy program.
“I can tell, when I put on her vest, she’s ready to go,” Kanarek said.
Their first assignment was Children’s Medical Center Dallas.
Here was an elderly dog, who rarely ever left Sandra’s home, now finding a home with Kanarek, and in the hearts of young children.
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Brooklyn, an 18-year-old patient, said, “Dogs are, like, the best thing that ever happened to me, like, in this hospital.”
Kanarek thought the piercing blue-eyed beauty was just right for another kind of therapy: hospice. It just so happened that when Gaia’s owner died, Kanarek was finishing her training to be an end-of-life doula.
Today, she and Gaia minister to the terminally ill.
Asked whether she was doing all of this for Gaia’s benefit, or for herself, Kanarek replied, “I think I’m doing this for both of us. I think it benefits both of us. She gets to go out and see people, and I get to see the response that she gets when she’s out. There’s just nothing better than that.”
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Gaia has brought the writer out of her shell, so much so that Kanarek wrote about their life together in an essay for the Washington Post:
“Gaia’s life changed when she became part of our family. She interacts with the kids down the street (her fan club) during our walks, and she provides laughter and levity to sick children, all with her tail wagging. She goes with us on road trips and to outdoor festivals where she knows that people will stop to run their hands down her fluffy back or ask her for a high-five.
“My life is different too. Meeting dozens of people during our visits has brought out the extrovert tendencies I lost during the pandemic. Before I knock on each patient’s door, I breathe in, then greet families with confidence, knowing the reaction my sidekick will receive. …”
“As we pass through the halls of children’s hospital, I think of Sandra and hope she’s smiling, knowing how much joy Gaia brings to everyone she meets.”
“I’m trying not to cry,” Kanarek said, describing her new life with Gaia. “I don’t know. It’s just knowing the effect she has on people. It makes me happy; it makes me sad, because I wish I had known Sandra better, but I think this is the way that I’m helping keep her memory alive.”
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Sen. Thom Tillis says “the scope” of Helene damage in North Carolina “is more like Katrina”
As recovery missions and repairs continue in North Carolina more than a week after Hurricane Helene carved a path of devastation through the western part of the state, the state’s Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for more resources to bolster the relief effort and likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina’s mark on Louisiana in 2005.
“This is unlike anything that we’ve seen in this state,” Tillis told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday morning. “We need increased attention. We need to continue to increase the surge of federal resources.”
Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast U.S. after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Helene brought heavy rain and catastrophic flooding to communities across multiple states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, with North Carolina bearing the brunt of the destruction. Officials previously said hundreds of roads in western North Carolina were washed out and inaccessible after the storm, hampering rescue operations, and several highways were blocked by mudslides.
Tillis said Sunday that most roads in the region likely remained closed due to flooding and debris. Water, electricity and other essential services still have not been fully restored.
“The scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” he said. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a landmass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations.”
Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,000 people dead after it slammed into Louisiana’s Gulf Coast in August 2005, flooding neighborhoods and destroying infrastructure in and around New Orleans as well as in parts of the surrounding region. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. in the last 50 years, and the costliest storm on record.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 229, CBS News has confirmed, with at least 116 of those deaths reported in North Carolina alone. Officials have said they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts were ongoing, and a spokesperson for the police department in Asheville told CBS News Friday their officers were “actively working 75 cases of missing persons.”
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $100 million in emergency funds for North Carolina to rebuild the roads and bridges damaged by the hurricane.
“We are providing this initial round of funding so there’s no delay getting roads repaired and reopened, and re-establishing critical routes,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration will be with North Carolina every step of the way, and today’s emergency funding to help get transportation networks back up and running safely will be followed by additional federal resources.”
President Biden previously announced that the federal government would cover “100%” of costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures in North Carolina for six months.
With North Carolina leaders working with a number of relief agencies to deal with the aftermath of the storm, Tillis urged federal officials to ramp up the resources being funneled into the state’s hardest-hit areas. The senator also addressed a surge in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the Biden Administration’s disaster response, which have been fueled by Republican political figures like former President Donald Trump.
Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, were diverting funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency that would support the relief effort in North Carolina toward initiatives for immigrants. He also said baselessly that the administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, were withholding funds because many communities that were hit hardest are predominantly Republican. Elon Musk has shared false claims about FEMA, too.
“Many of these observations are not even from people on the ground,” Tillis said of those claims. “I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don’t need any of these distractions on the ground. It’s at the expense of the hard-working first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.”
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