Man's Best Friend

This Thanksgiving, Paul Brant says he’s thankful to be alive and grateful to his dog, 14-year-old Peaches, a purebred Maltese, for saving his life on Veterans Day.Brant suffers from heart disease, diabetes and bladder cancer. On Nov. 11, the 66-year-old Glenwood resident said he was sitting in a chair in his living unit at the Northglen Apartments when he blacked out and fell to the floor. He remembers little about the incident, only that Peaches came to his rescue.“The doctor at the hospital said I was dead. He said, ‘You died in the chair and fell,’” Brant recalls. “I can’t swear Peaches brought me back to life, but when I woke up, she was licking my face.”Disoriented and confused, Brant got himself up off the floor and called his sister and brother-in-law, Lea and Ernie Combs of Pacific Junction, to tell them what had happened. They convinced Brant that he should go to a hospital to be checked out. That evening, he was transported to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs, where cardiologists determined he had suffered a heart attack sitting in his chair at home.The next day, a defibrillator was inserted into his chest. He was kept overnight and released from the hospital a day later. He returned home to be reunited with Peaches, his best friend.“I want to think that she brought me back to life because she loves me,” Brant said. “I look after her and she looks after me. She wants to get on me and lick my wound where they put in the defibrillator.“She’s my companion and my best friend. I don’t know how I’d get along without her.”