It was 5 a.m. on a Saturday when Axel, a one-year-old border collie, came to Amanda and Daines Tanner’s room to wake them up. The dog didn’t stop until his owner finally got up. The man thought he wanted to go out to urinate, but the dog went straight to Gabriel’s door and started scratching it until they entered. He knew something was wrong.
The 17-year-old boy was having a stroke: he had difficulty speaking, it was difficult for him to walk and move his right arm. He quickly took him to the emergency room of the Houston Hospital, where he has gradually recovered from all his ailments, according to the American newspaper The Washington Post.
Gabriel remembers almost nothing of that night. During the day, he felt a little headache, but it disappeared and he didn’t give it any importance. He went to sleep. In the middle of the night, he woke up with his right arm numb. He tried to go out to have something to eat in the kitchen, but he couldn’t move or walk. He fell to the ground.
Seeing his owner’s discomfort, the dog ran to his parents’ room to alert them that Gabriel urgently needed help, an intervention that ended up being essential. Sabih Effendi, a neurosurgeon who treated Gabriel, says he may never have recovered if this border collie had not woken the family that morning.
“Without that early notification of his arrival at the hospital, he really would have had truly permanent deficits that would have made him truly non-functional and unable to live life,” this specialist explains to this medium.
According to the neurosurgeon, a blood vessel connected to Gabriel’s brain had torn and was preventing blood from flowing to that part of his brain. It is not common in young people under 30 years of age, because strokes occur in older populations.
After the scare, this American family tries to regain normality. Gabriel has not yet returned to school and does everything from home. He hopes to return to football in December. However, he will have to be careful because the chances of a repeat accident are high, although Axel will always be there to keep an eye on him.
