Sandra Donally was fast asleep when Storm jumped onto her bed shortly after midnight, startling her awake. Sandra, who is deaf, noticed the landing light was on and her husband, Gary, wasn’t beside her. She assumed he had gone to the bathroom.
There was a warm space where he had been sleeping, and Sandra expected her dog to settle into it. Usually, Storm would come over for a cuddle. If she had done that, Sandra later explained, she would have gone back to sleep.
But the cockapoo stayed at the other end of the bed, sitting rigidly upright with her attention fixed on the landing. Sandra told her Gary was in the bathroom and asked her to go back to bed. Storm wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t even turn to look at Sandra.
“When she wouldn’t look at me, I knew something was wrong,” Sandra recalled.
Sandra got out of bed to look for Gary. Moments later, she found him unconscious and bleeding, his body curled around the bottom of the staircase.
Twenty-four days in hospital
Sandra had registered for an emergency text service, but she was shaking too badly to use it. Instead, she called their son, Tom, who lived nearby.
The couple later pieced together what had happened. Gary had been coming out of the bathroom when he lost his footing and missed the handrail.
Paramedics took Gary to Royal Stoke Hospital, where doctors found multiple facial fractures, including breaks on both sides of his jaw. He spent a week sedated while the medical team worked to reduce the swelling and assess the damage before carrying out reconstructive surgery. After 24 days in hospital, he was finally able to return home in August, and Sandra was grateful to the team who had helped him get there. “The staff were wonderful and did an awesome job of putting him back together,” she said.
Storm had been Sandra’s hearing assistance dog since 2024. After suddenly losing her hearing in 2017, Sandra had struggled to relax even at home, and busy places often felt overwhelming. Having Storm beside her helped her feel more comfortable and less withdrawn.
For Sandra, the hardest possibility to consider is how long Gary might have lain at the bottom of the stairs without Storm. She usually woke at 6:30 a.m. Had she gone back to sleep, she believes hours could have passed before she realized something was wrong.
“I’m convinced she saved his life,” Sandra said in the SWNS report.
Sources: Express & Star (SWNS) and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.
