Dogs are incredibly loyal creatures — they view their humans as part of their pack and show unwavering devotion to those they love.
One adorable miniature schnauzer proved her loyalty in a major way. She ventured quite a distance from her home in search of her owner, who had been transported to the hospital.
The staff at Idaho’s Mercy Medical Center did a double-take when the doors of the facility opened, and in walked a miniature schnauzer.
She was not seeking any medical treatment; rather, the pooch was looking for her owner, Nancy Franck, who was admitted after undergoing cancer treatment surgery.
Surveillance footage captured the 10-year-old dog named Sissy strutting through the hospital lobby on a mission.
According to Nancy’s husband, Dale, he had let Sissy and their other dog, Barney, outside to do their business. While outside, Sissy managed to escape from the couple’s property.
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“I was panicking. She’s my baby,” he admitted to NBC News.
He called the animal shelter and police before calling his daughter, Sarah, in hopes of finding the dog.
Four hours later, Dale received a call from hospital security informing him that his dog may have been the one roaming the hallways. Sure enough, she was!
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Hospital security couldn’t resist letting the dog up to her mom’s room for a visit.
“She was on a mission,” Nancy said. “I didn’t think they could do it. I thought dogs could find their way home, but this one found the hospital.”
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As owners, we often don’t give our dogs enough credit for just how smart they can be. Due to their keen sense of smell, they are able to detect even the most subtle changes in their home, including their owner’s absence.
“(Dogs) have more than 100 million sensory receptor sites in the nasal cavity compared to 6 million in people, and the area of the canine brain devoted to analyzing odors is about 40 times larger than the comparable part of the human brain” VCA Animal Hospitals explained. “In fact, it has been estimated that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people.”
“Our dogs do not need to see us to identify us,” they added. “The dog’s sense of smell is so adept that a blind dog has much less difficulty adjusting to the loss of vision than a human does.”
Due to their strong emotional connection with their humans, dogs can sometimes become anxious and distressed when they are without their humans for long periods. They wonder why they can’t go everywhere with their owners and miss them greatly when they are gone.
Most pups eagerly wait for their owner’s return — but evidently, not Sissy, who took matters into her own paws by using her impeccable sense of smell to travel 20 blocks back to her mom!
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Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.
