Anything Helps 2: A Woman With a Dog

(Image from andilit.com)
I know this is a man, but it’s a good picture, isn’t it?

In an earlier post I wrote about Steve, a homeless guy I see almost every day after dropping off the kids at school.

Another homeless person I’ve met, but only once, was a woman in her late thirties or early forties. It was a cold and rainy day, and I stopped at the traffic light she was at, beside an overpass, in between showers. When I gave her some money she thanked me and told me to stay dry.

It always takes me aback when a homeless person says things to me, in my cozy minivan, like, “Stay dry,” or “Stay safe,” of “Stay warm”. So I said that I’d be fine, but would she stay dry? She said she’d try. She was close to tears. I asked her if she could go to a shelter, but she explained that she couldn’t, because of her dog, and the shelters don’t allow dogs. But she needed her dog; it alerted her to seizures.

The light turned green. I never saw her again.

I’ve googled homeless shelters in Austin, for future reference. Apparently the ARCH has some accommodations for dogs, but the ARCH only helps men. There’s no mention on any of the sites for women’s shelters about accepting dogs.

This article points out that, although there is so far no scientific explanation why dogs can sense the onset of seizures, many people do have seizure alert dogs. These dogs have not been trained and are not certified in any way, and that’s why shelters don’t consider them service animals.

The next post in this series is about a man sobbing behind his sign.