A teenager in Spring, Texas, who had a stroke in August would probably be in much worse shape today if it wasn't for Axel, a 1-year-old border collie who raised the alarm, doctors say. Amanda Tanner tells Today.com that Axel, adopted from a rescue group last year, was far more insistent than usual when he woke up her and her husband Daines around 5am on a Saturday morning. She says that when her husband tried to let Axel outside, the dog instead clawed at her son Gabriel's bedroom door. Daines checked on the 17-year-old and found he was slurring his words and couldn't feel the right side of his body, reports People.
The family rushed Gabriel to a Houston hospital. He was seen by doctors who determined that he was having a stroke and gave him blood thinners to restore the flow of blood to his brain. He is now walking and talking again and can move his right side, but his symptoms could have become permanent if Axel hadn't woken up Gabriel's parents and treatment had been delayed for hours, a neurosurgeon who treated him tells the Washington Post. "Without that early notification of him getting to the hospital, you really would have had really permanent deficits that would have made him really nonfunctional and unable to live life," Sabih Effendi says.
Gabriel, a high school senior who plays for his school's soccer team, says he went to school and soccer practice the day before the stroke and there were no warning signs, the Post reports. He says he woke up around 5am and lost his balance while walking in the living room—and he remembers seeing Axel before he walked back to his bedroom. Gabriel is being home-schooled for now but he hopes to return to school by December; Effendi says he is making "amazing progress." His mom says Axel, one of a litter of nine puppies found by the rescue, is "tasked with following Gabriel everywhere" and she plans to make him a medal for his collar. (More uplifting news stories.)
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