This story is about a boy and his dog.
I'm Larry Thronberg and Thunder is my service dog.
I'm 100% disabled because of Agent Orange from Vietnam.
His name is Thunder, but he's afraid of Thunder.
He'll come hide anywhere.
He'll hide under the table.
He'll hide under my desk.
There's times that he gets nervous,
and I haven't heard anything.
He senses changes, and he can feel the difference
in the pressure.
And I can tell that Thunder's on the way.
My name is Ruth Ann Montez.
A few years ago, I went to the animal shelter
to find my perfect female, white, small, short-haired dog.
And immediately, I fell in love with my small, white,
female dog.
Thunder is an 80-pound Husky shepherd mix.
He was an abused dog, and he was suffering from heartworm
and weighed 30 pounds less than he did now.
I could feel every vertebra and his pelvis.
He's a certified therapy dog, and he's my big boy.
He was an abused dog, and I think maybe
that one of the previous people saw his size,
and they wanted to train him as a hunting dog, shooting
over him and near him, because now any kind of sharp noises.
And he goes hide.
He comes out in the morning and goes down steps,
takes a right, goes out around what I call the perimeter,
and checks to see if there's anything dangerous coming.
And then he will go and do his business.
I can tell him far enough, and he'll peel off
and come back toward me.
At a heart attack in 2006, it was OK for a while,
but then in 2008, 10, and 12, I had many strokes,
and I have problems with speech.
In 2013, four of my doctors told me
I needed a service dog.
So I got Ruthanne to come over, and we
retrained Thunder as a service dog.
Most people who have service dogs, like blind people,
mostly, have them on their left side.
But I'm blind in my right eye, so I have Thunder on my right
side.
He just started doing this himself.
When he saw that I might run into something,
he just very gently neds my knee,
and that tells me it's time to move a little bit to the left
to keep her money into things.
He loves to travel.
All we have to do is time a road trip.
Huh?
What about a road trip?
He goes berserk.
He just wiggles, and wiggles, and wiggles, and wiggles.
He jumps in, the van sits up in the back seat,
and he's ready to go.
There was several times that Ruthanne and I
went from Vero Beach up to Fayetteville, North Carolina,
and then to Asheville, North Carolina, back to Fayetteville,
and back to Vero Beach in four days,
and he was with us all the time.
I was out on the patio one time and took him for a walk.
I just had an idea, and so I took off his leash and said,
Thunder, take me home.
And he followed me from the main road
across a big patch of grass and directly into the sun porch.
And so we've been doing it ever since.
When he's with this red coat, he's a perfect general.
But sometimes he's very stubborn,
and he doesn't want to do what I want him to do.
But he's worth every bit of it.
Thunder is 12 years old, has arthritis, and back legs.
So now this is his happy dance.
Ruthanne has an edge, and Thunder was outside one time.
Ruthanne and I were loading things
and left the front door on a passenger side open,
and somehow or another, because he
was having problems with his moving at that time.
He got up into her edge down on the pedals
and then couldn't figure out how to get back out.
And it took about 20 minutes for Ruthanne
to get him out of there.
He's my service dog, but he's Ruthanne's pet.
You want to lie down with me?
And he knows the difference.
Ruthanne loves to get this dog dressed up.
One Christmas time, she dressed him up as an antler,
and he was so dejected, and he tried to get rid of it,
and it slipped and looked like he was being muzzled.
Then he came over to me as if he was saying,
please make her stop.
And I did.
And the expression on his face was, oh, thank you, Larry.
Did you mention that he's your chick magnet?
No.
That's true, though.
Yes, when the two go out, I know
that there's going to be many women around them
when I return.
When we moved up north, a family lived right next door,
and as soon as thunder came out, this one little blonde girl
started running away and found out
that she had been bitten by a large dog.
But this was just two days later,
and the little blonde is the one who's right up next to him.
He loved her, and he's just a lovable dog.
Lots of bugs live in Florida, and some of them
are called gnats.
They're little black things.
And thunder will be out in the yard, and they start swarming.
And every once in a while, they'll get too close,
and he'll go, and most of the time, they get away.
But just one time, I saw he caught one,
and the expression on his face was just like this, and he
still chases them.
Thunder loves the water.
We have to watch him because some of the canals in Florida
aren't really safe.
But he goes skinny dipping into the lakes.
He goes into the rivers.
He does canals when we can't stop him.
He just loves the water.
He came over and sat next to me one time,
and I put my arm around there.
And Ruthanne said, there he is, a boy and his dog.
He is my second best friend.
He takes care of me.
And he's the best dog I've ever had.
I've had dogs and cats since I was a kid,
and nobody has ever come close to thunder.
Very actually misspoke.
This film is about a dog and his boy and the girl
that loves them both.
This video is dedicated with love to Ruthanne,
my best friend, my lover, my love.
