Part 2: A 65-Year-Old Asthmatic Woman Collapsed at 2 A.M. and Couldn’t Reach Her Inhaler on the Nightstand — Her Pit Bull, Returned 4 Times for “Counter Surfing,” Did the Exact Thing 4 Families Had Punished Him For
I’m Maya Sutton. I’m thirty-three. I’m the volunteer coordinator at Tulsa Animal Welfare — the same shelter Bandit was surrendered to four times before Verna adopted him in March of 2022. What I am telling you, I am telling you with Verna’s full permission and review, in her own words.
What happened in Verna’s bedroom at 2:14 a.m. on a Sunday in late September of last year is something I have asked her to tell me three different times because I keep wanting to make sure I am writing it correctly.
She had gone to bed at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night. She had taken her evening medications — two for blood pressure, one for cholesterol, one for the allergic asthma she has been managing for six years. She had read for thirty-one minutes from a paperback Tony Hillerman novel. She had turned off her bedside lamp. She had said, “Goodnight, Bandit,” to a Pit Bull mix curled at the foot of her bed, the way she had said it every night for three years.
At 2:14 a.m., she woke up.
She woke up because she could not breathe.
She knew what was happening. She had been having severe asthma attacks since 2019. They came on at night. They came on without warning. Her shoulders pulled up. Her lungs would not expand. Each breath in was about one-third of a normal breath, with a high whistling sound she had learned to hate.
She reached for the inhaler on her nightstand.
She missed.
She rolled over to reach again. The asthma attack — and the panic, and the dark, and her age, and a left knee she has had three surgeries on — pulled her over the edge of the bed.
She fell.
She landed on the carpet between her bed and her nightstand on her left hip and shoulder. She could not get up.
She could not breathe.
The inhaler was on the nightstand. She could see it. She could not reach it. The bed was between her and the door. Her phone was on the nightstand next to the inhaler. Both were eighteen inches above her head and her arms had stopped working the way arms work when you cannot get oxygen.
She told me later, “Maya. I lay there for what I am going to estimate was thirty seconds. It might have been ten. It might have been a minute. I don’t know. I was already grey-blue at the edges of my vision. I had thought, in those thirty seconds, that I had not said goodbye to my sister and I had forgotten to thank Wallace’s brother for the Christmas card.”
She closed her eyes.
She heard Bandit move on the bed.
She did not see what came next. She had her eyes closed. She had given up.
What she felt, about eight seconds later, was something cold and plastic being pressed gently against her right hand on the carpet.
She opened her eyes.
The inhaler was in her hand.
Bandit was standing on the carpet six inches from her face. He had four feet on the ground. He was breathing fast through his nose. His root-beer eyes were focused on hers.
He had taken the inhaler off her nightstand and brought it to her.
She used it.
She lived.
Verna lay on the carpet for another twenty minutes before she could sit up.
Bandit lay on the carpet next to her the entire twenty minutes.
When she could finally pull herself up against the side of the bed, she did not get back into bed. She sat with her back against the bed and her legs out in front of her on the carpet. She put one hand on Bandit’s head.
She said, very quietly, into the dark of her bedroom, “Honey. What did you just do.”
Bandit thumped his tail twice against the carpet.
She sat there until 6 a.m.
When the sun came up through her bedroom curtains, she pulled herself up to standing using the side of the bed and the corner of the nightstand. She walked, slowly, to her hall closet. She kept a small filing cabinet there with all the paperwork she had ever signed in her sixty-five years.
She pulled out the manila folder labeled “BANDIT — adoption paperwork — 03/2022.”
She carried it back to her bedroom.
She sat on the floor with her back against the bed.
She read it.
The folder contained four separate surrender forms. Four different households. Four different reasons that all said the same thing.
The first surrender, from December of 2018, was from a young couple in north Tulsa. The reason for surrender said: Dog has stolen food from kitchen counters six separate times in two months. Has stolen a TV remote from the coffee table. Has stolen a pill bottle from the bathroom counter. We cannot have a dog who steals.
The second surrender, from June of 2019, was from a single father with two teenage sons in Owasso. The reason said: Dog took prescription medication from kitchen table while we were eating dinner. Vet had to induce vomiting. Dog is too tall. Counter surfing is dangerous to him and to us.
The third surrender, from October of 2020, was from a couple in Broken Arrow. The reason said: Returns: Bandit is the most counter-surfing dog we have ever owned. He took my husband’s car keys off the entry table. He took a sandwich off the dining room table. He took my reading glasses off the kitchen counter. We are on edge in our own home.
The fourth surrender, from May of 2021, was from a young woman in Sand Springs. The reason said: I love this dog and I am crying writing this. He is the sweetest boy I have ever met. But every time I leave the room he takes something off a surface and brings it to me. I work twelve-hour nursing shifts and I cannot have a dog who needs this much engagement. Please find him a person who will appreciate this.
Verna read all four. She read the fourth one twice.
She put the folder down on the carpet.
She picked up her phone — which Bandit had not brought her, because she had only needed the inhaler, because Bandit had been surgical about which thing on the nightstand to grab — and she called me.
She said, “Maya. This is Verna Cuthbert. I adopted Bandit from you three years ago.”
I said, “Verna! Yes! Of course. How is he?”
She said, “He saved my life last night. I need you to know what just happened.”
I sat down on my office floor.
She told me.
When she got to the part where Bandit pressed the inhaler against her hand, I was crying.
She said, “Maya. I read his surrender forms an hour ago. All four of them said he had a behavior they couldn’t live with. All four of them called it counter surfing.”
She said, “Maya. He wasn’t counter surfing. He was bringing things to people.”
She said, “He was bringing things to people who didn’t need anything.”
She said, “He was practicing for thirty months until somebody actually needed him.”
She said, “Honey. I don’t know how to tell you this. But I think we have been calling a service dog a thief for six years.”
I drove to Verna’s house that Sunday afternoon. I brought a colleague — Dr. Beatrice Halloran, a behavioral specialist who consults for our shelter and for two veterinary practices in the Tulsa area.
We sat at Verna’s kitchen table. Bandit lay on the linoleum floor next to her chair with his chin on her foot.
I told Dr. Halloran the story.
She listened. She asked Verna a few questions. She watched Bandit on the floor. She watched the way Bandit’s eyes tracked Verna every time Verna shifted her weight.
Then Dr. Halloran said, “Verna. I want to tell you what I think happened in your bedroom last night. Then I want to tell you what I think has been happening in this dog’s life for six years.”
She said, “Bandit has what we call high object retrieval drive. It is one of the most prized traits in service-dog training programs. We breed for it specifically in Labradors and Golden Retrievers. Pit Bulls do not typically present with this drive. When they do, it is genetic — it cannot be trained in. You either have it or you do not.”
She said, “A dog with high object retrieval drive will, on his own, identify objects in his environment that have value to his person. He will pick those objects up. He will bring them to his person. He will present them. He will wait for a response.”
She said, “A dog with this drive in a household that does not understand it looks like a counter-surfing thief. A dog with this drive in a household that has trained him for service work looks like a hero.”
She said, “Verna. Bandit has been, for six years, trying to give people things they didn’t need. The TV remote. The car keys. The sandwich. The reading glasses. He was looking for the object that mattered. He wasn’t being trained. He was figuring it out.”
She said, “He spent three years on your nightstand, Verna. He saw you reach for that inhaler hundreds of times. He saw your face when you used it. He saw what happened to you when it worked. He learned what the inhaler did.”
She said, “Last night you fell. You couldn’t reach it. He had been waiting six years for somebody to need an object enough that he would have a chance to bring it. He has the drive. He has the technique. He had the inhaler memorized.”
She paused.
She said, “He wasn’t trained for this. He trained himself for this.”
She said, “Verna. The previous four families didn’t have a thief. They had a service dog who was looking for his job.”
She said, “He found his job in your bedroom.”
I drove home from Verna’s house that night and sat at my kitchen table with all four of Bandit’s old surrender forms in front of me.
I had pulled them from his shelter file before I left work that afternoon.
I read each one again.
The young woman from Sand Springs — the fourth one, the one who had cried writing her surrender form — had written, in the margin at the bottom of her form, a small handwritten note our intake staff had filed without comment. The note said:
If you ever find a person who actually needs Bandit to bring them things, please call me. I want to know he ended up where he was supposed to be.
She had left her phone number.
I called her the next morning.
Her name was Hailey. She was thirty-one. She was still a nurse, now at a hospital in Wichita. She picked up on the third ring.
I said, “Hailey. My name is Maya. I’m calling from Tulsa Animal Welfare. About Bandit.”
She was quiet on the phone for a moment.
She said, “Maya. Did you find him a person?”
I said, “Hailey. We did.”
I told her what had happened in Verna’s bedroom.
I heard her start to cry on the other end of the line.
She said, “Oh my god. He did it. He got there.”
I said, “Hailey. I’m so sorry. None of us figured out what he was. You wrote it on the form and we filed the form.”
She said, “Maya. Stop. Don’t apologize. He just needed somebody who needed him. He found her. That’s the whole thing. That’s the only thing.”
She said, “Tell her — tell Verna — please tell her — Bandit is the best dog I ever had. Tell her I am so glad she’s alive. Tell her I am so glad he got to do the thing he was made to do.”
I said, “Hailey. I will. Word for word.”
It has been nine months.
Verna is sixty-six now. Her asthma has been recategorized as severe. She has a new pulmonologist. She has a nebulizer in addition to her inhaler. She has a small medical alert pendant she wears around her neck at night.
She still keeps the inhaler on her nightstand in the same spot.
Bandit still sleeps on the foot of her bed.
She has changed one thing.
Every night before bed, she takes the inhaler off her nightstand. She holds it up. She says, “Bandit. The inhaler.”
Bandit walks up the bed. He sniffs the inhaler. He licks her hand. He goes back to the foot of the bed and curls up.
It is, she says, the only training she has ever done with him.
She did not need to do more.
He had been ready for six years.
She has another small ritual.
Every Sunday morning, after her coffee, she opens the manila folder labeled “BANDIT — adoption paperwork.” She takes out the four surrender forms. She lays them out on her kitchen table side by side.
She reads each of the four reasons for surrender out loud. To the room. To Bandit lying on the linoleum.
Then she says, “Bandit. They didn’t know who you were.”
He thumps his tail.
She says, “I know who you are.”
He thumps his tail twice.
She puts the surrender forms back in the folder. She puts the folder back in the hall closet.
That is her week’s work.
I drove out to Verna’s house last Tuesday for a follow-up.
She was in her backyard with Bandit. He was lying on the grass. She was deadheading her petunias.
I sat down on her back porch.
She said, “Maya. I want to tell you something.”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “When Wallace died in 2018, I thought my job was over. Forty-one years of marriage. No kids. I thought I was done. I thought I was going to wait around in a quiet house until something killed me.”
She said, “Bandit was brought into my life by my sister. He was about to die in a shelter because four families called him a thief.”
She said, “Maya. I was a job he was waiting for. He was a job I didn’t know I had.”
She paused.
She said, “I’m not done.”
She said it to me.
She said it to Bandit, who lifted his head from the grass.
She said it, I think, to Wallace.
Bandit thumped his tail twice.
She went back to her petunias.
If you want to see Bandit now — the way he still sleeps on the foot of Verna’s bed every night, the way he checks her nightstand before he closes his eyes, the small life he is still keeping for a woman four families thought they didn’t want — I’ve shared his most recent video in the comments.
