A cancer-stricken widow's empathy for a dying police dog

Show Caption Hide Caption Widow with cancer donates $15,000 for police dog Betty McCoy of Waterloo, 89, was worried about her own sick dog when she donated to the Winneshiek County Sheriff to replace a police dog dying of brain cancer. McCoy has coped with lung cancer for four years.

WATERLOO, Ia. — Betty McCoy was overwhelmed by empathy last month when she read a sad story about a police dog named Ricky who was dying of cancer.

Ricky, 9, worked for a sheriff’s department a couple of counties away, in Winneshiek, but had been forced into a fast, fatal retirement by a brain tumor. McCoy, 89, a frail but defiant survivor through her own disease and grief, at that moment just wanted to do something, anything to help a fellow dog lover.

McCoy read the news in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, the newspaper that her late husband, Robert, ran for decades as editor and publisher. He died in 2000 after a bout with prostate cancer that had spread and riddled his body.

McCoy read the story about Ricky with her own beloved dog, Sophie, nearby. The tiny, fluffy white Shih Tzu had joined the family 10 days before Robert’s death, a welcome comfort as her husband faded away.

“It’s a hell of a time to get a new dog,” Robert had wryly remarked from his hospital bed in the upstairs bedroom.

By last month, Sophie, nearly 16 and mostly deaf and blind, began to lose control of her legs. She needed to be carried upstairs. She seemed to have suffered a stroke or seizure. Her prognosis was dire.

McCoy’s own prognosis had been bleak four years ago. She was in Florida at a routine checkup when she was told that she suffered from stage 4 lung cancer and had three months to live.

Back in Iowa, the plucky McCoy, an ex-smoker who remains a lively conversationalist despite speaking in a wheeze, has outlived her death sentence with a perpetual routine of chemotherapy, every three weeks.

So maybe you can understand how McCoy was primed to be utterly heartbroken when she read the story of Ricky — as she sat there with her own cancer barely held at bay and a sick dog that had been her companion longer than any other pet, the last dog she said she would ever own.

The article noted that the sheriff’s office would need to raise funds before Ricky’s handler, Deputy Sheriff Steve Nesvik, would be able to take another trusty canine on his nightly patrols.

McCoy immediately decided to have her daughter, Kathy, call and tell the sheriff’s department that she would help replace the dog.

When Kathy later phoned Sheriff Dan Marx — even as her mom received another dose of chemo — the lawman was flummoxed that a cancer-stricken widow from outside of his jurisdiction would so swiftly hand over $15,000.

“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” he told Kathy after a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. “I don’t feel like I should just hang up.”

The day that Ricky — a 72-pound Belgian Malinois born in the Czech Republic and trained in Fort Dodge — was buried outside the sheriff’s office, Marx sprang the news to his officers about McCoy’s generosity.

The department was compelled to show its gratitude. Two days before Thanksgiving, Marx and Nesvik were among a group of 11 who traveled to Waterloo to thank McCoy. The officers never had embarked on such a field trip.

“I did warn our neighbors next door that there hadn’t been a mass murder here,” Kathy said of the fleet of cars that descended on the family's 1955 ranch home, with a pool in back.

Nesvik “was still in tears when he came here,” McCoy said.

Even now the deputy nearly chokes up to talk about his dead dog. The entire sheriff's department posed for a photo with McCoy; the 6-foot, 250-pound deputy knelt next to the slender, seated McCoy.

People talk about how dogs often physically mirror their masters, and of course Sophie and Ricky led dramatically different lives.

Sophie would scamper around the house and lounge in McCoy’s lap. Ricky regularly would spring into action from his mobile kennel in the back of Nesvik’s patrol car.

Whenever the police lights began to flash, Ricky would bark and snap to attention.

When Nesvik strayed out of the car on a traffic stop, Ricky kept his eyes locked on his master. A button on the deputy’s belt could trigger the back passenger door to pop open so that the dog could pounce to his rescue.

One suspect who rolled his pickup during a high-speed chase and then fled on foot soon was tracked down by the pair a quarter of a mile away in a pasture.

In his career, Ricky sniffed out marijuana, hashish, cocaine, meth and ecstasy.

Nesvik, 36, grew up with farm dogs, but Ricky slept in the corner of the bedroom with him and his wife, Amanda. The pooch also loved to play tug-of-war with the couple’s 3-year-old daughter.

But in recent weeks Nesvik had noticed Ricky’s back end had begun to sway. He slipped on floors. He was sensitive around the face.

The local veterinarian struggled to diagnose the problem. Was it a bad tooth? Arthritis? Neurological disorder?

Ultimately, an MRI scan at the University of Minnesota confirmed a tumor. There was nothing to do but give Ricky palliative care at home.

Ricky would have the occasional burst of energy. But the night that he ran after a cat in the back yard but suddenly stopped short, screaming and writhing in pain, Nesvik knew it was time.

“To put a service dog down — they work so hard for you,” Nesvik said.

The only consolation was seeing the pain lift from Ricky’s face as the dog lost consciousness.

McCoy had a similar experience after Nesvik’s visit. Sophie finally had to be euthanized the day after Thanksgiving. Her veterinarian made a house call to the ground-floor sun room where McCoy spends much of her time. The widow insisted on glasses of wine all around to the half-dozen people — all of whom ended up in tears.

The only food Sophie seemed able to stomach that day was her favorite dessert.

“Not a drink of water,” McCoy said. “Not a bite of food. But we had our last chocolate ice cream cone together.”

Sophie lay in a chair next to McCoy.

“The least you can do for a dog that you love is keep petting them as they’re leaving,” said Kathy, McCoy's daughter.

“I don’t think she felt the needle,” McCoy said, “and I couldn’t look.”

McCoy, who has survived on an intravenous chemo cocktail, sat next to her faithful companion, whose suffering was ended with an injection.

Sophie died instantly. Silently.

“And then they carried her out in her little bed,” McCoy said.

Sophie’s ashes will be buried with McCoy, just as Kathy plans to be buried with the ashes from her yellow Labrador, Luke, who died nine years ago. McCoy's late son, Bill, who died last year from a massive heart attack at age 59, had a cat named Dog that was tucked into his casket.

“It’s a different love than human love," Kathy said. "Dogs are unconditional. Fortunately I think we all were raised with unconditional love. But a lot of people aren’t. … (Dogs are) a comfort to me.”

“And to me,” McCoy said. “And such good company.”

McCoy will not replace Sophie, but Kathy and her husband (Tim Hurley, who lost last week’s run-off mayoral election in Waterloo) have four dogs of their own to bring over to stir up the quiet home where the widow receives around-the-clock care.

But McCoy plans to follow the fortunes of Ricky’s successor, who could be purchased soon enough to be on the streets within several months. That next dog is likely to be named McCoy, or Robert.

If her humble story resonates with any message, McCoy said, she hopes it's this: “You don’t just take care of needs here. If there’s a need elsewhere, you step out there and do it, too. Hopefully everybody will do that, reach out a little bit.”

The room where McCoy sat was strewn with other old photos: Her dog Trouble, a Scottish terrier, was a pet in the 1930s. Holly the collie posed in another snapshot. Kathy talked about how a raucous canine foursome — Rags, Laddie, Nick and Thor — thundered through the McCoy household when she was a child.

McCoy's spontaneous generosity to the strangers who mourned Ricky was a lifetime in the making, from a woman who felt lucky to still be around to reach out.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook (/KyleMunson) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).