Small in stature. Chicho possessed a lion’s heart. When the tubby little Chihuahua decided he wasn’t about to let Annie give up on life, he unexpectedly became the unofficial therapy dog of Irving House.
A senior himself, and fresh from death row, Chicho seemed to have an innate understanding and compassion for Annie’s fragile emotional state following her life-saving, and life-changing, surgery to remove her colon at age seventy-one.
The two met quite by chance when Annie’s caregiver, Chris, also Irving House’s founder, took Chicho along on one of her daily visits designed to get Annie to do her physical therapy that typically ended with Annie’s adamant refusal and weary request to be left alone.
Annie was not immediately delighted by the bouncy little chi who took to running around on his four little legs insistently bringing Annie his ball, yapping at her until she rolled it across the floor for him over and over, passing the hour.
Eventually, their routine grew to include Chicho racing around the dining room where he'd make any kind of noise to make Annie get up and see what he was into, usually a shopping bag, or the laundry basket. It wasn’t long before he learned that if he snatched a bra from the basket Annie would waddle after him with her cane. The faster he ran, the faster she waddled.
She would point her arthritic finger at him and warn “I’m going to get you” and Chicho would walk backwards urging her to try. Days seldom found Annie on the couch anymore – unless it was to give Chicho a brushing and a cookie.
Annie took to talking to the tubby little chi, opening up about her feelings with a trust she didn't seem able to share with any person. Chicho would routinely sit with his head cocked to one side intent on Annie's every word or else, the times Annie needed to release the tears she'd been holding, Chicho would lay quietly with his head in Annie's lap.
The months passed quickly and on a bright and breezy Spring afternoon Annie tied her own sneakers and with Chicho’s leash in one hand and Chris’s hand in the other this lady, who had not been out of her house in over a year, took her first proud steps outside and seized the day!
In less time than seemed possible, Chicho accomplished for Annie what a team of highly trained physical therapists could not – he got her out of her house. he got her walking and doing her exercises and he got her living her life again.
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