Absolutely The Goodest Boy

I work in the bakery of a chain grocery store. Today, I’m alone in the bakery with my coworker, who is about four months pregnant, baking some cookies and boxing them up before we go home for the day.

One of our regulars wanders past and waves as she drops some things into her trolley. As always, her service dog is silently following her with his vest on. I’ve never asked what the dog is for — that seems incredibly rude — but have often wondered as she seems healthy, though I know there are tonnes of invisible illnesses. I’m boxing up some more cookies when I hear our customer talking to her dog.

Regular: “Hey, [Dog]! What the h***?! Heel!”

The dog has walked away from the customer and is sitting at the gate into the bakery, whining and pawing at it. I’ve never seen this dog break focus for even a split second, so I am highly confused. My coworker walks over to the gate to make sure it is latched and the dog starts whining even louder.

By now, the customer has come over and clipped the dog’s lead to its harness again, apologizing profusely.

Regular: “I’m so sorry. He has never done this before; he’s been trained as a service dog since he was a puppy. Come on, [Dog].”

The dog whines and paws at the gate again, refusing to move. The regular looks over the gate at my coworker and squints.

Regular: “Are you diabetic?”

Coworker: “No? I mean, I feel a little gross today, but that’s to be expected.”

My coworker laughs awkwardly and gestures at her bump.

Regular: “I’m sorry to ask this, but could you come on this side of the gate? I promise he won’t hurt you.”

My coworker glances at me and I shrug, still not really getting what’s happening. My coworker goes out the gate and the dog stops whining, instead sniffing my coworker’s hands and legs thoroughly. He takes a step back and then lays down and puts his paws on his nose.

Regular: “Are you sure, [Dog]?”

The dog gives one solid, quiet bark and then gets up and circles my coworker again before spinning in a circle and putting his paw on her knee.

Regular: *To me* “You need to call an ambulance.”

My coworker is suddenly out of her shock.

Coworker: “Oh, no, really, I’m totally fine! Just a bit worn out today.”

Regular: “No, honey. I don’t know if you’ve got gestational diabetes or something else is wrong, but he’s telling me your blood sugar is critically low. That’s why he’s trying to get you to sit down; he thinks you’re going to faint — and you might. He’s never indicated wrong. Do you have juice or some jellybeans?”

I call for my manager and he comes down, agreeing that we should probably call an ambulance to be on the safe side. That’s just as well, because the regular is threatening to do it herself. Luckily, being a small town, a lady walking past overhears and comes over to talk to my coworker. The lady is a nurse, so she is checking my coworker’s pulse on a little stopwatch when my regular starts digging through her bag.

Regular: “Here. I keep this around in case my continuous monitor breaks or something happens to my phone and I can’t read my numbers. I’ve got a fresh lancet here. Do you want to check her sugars?”

She handed the nurse a little blood sugar testing kit and stepped back out of the fray of my manager, my coworker, the nurse, and a couple of other store workers who had come to see what the noise was about. [Regular]’s dog had gone back to being the picture of obedience and was sitting under her trolley out of the way. 

The nurse used the little monitor on my coworker and it beeped and flashed red, the screen not giving us any numbers, just reading “LOW” in big letters. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and took my coworker away, and we all continued with our day.

A few days later, my coworker came back to work. She showed us the blood sugar monitor she has to use for the rest of her pregnancy and told us that the doctor said it was a miracle she was still conscious at the time with her sugars so low. My coworker was terrified; she’d been planning on finishing up at work and going home to take a nap, which the doctor said would have been absolutely disastrous, even fatal, since she lives alone.

The next time my regular came through, the dog didn’t even glance at my coworker. He did, however, get the biggest meaty bone the butcher department could find for him!

This story is part of our end-of-year Feel Good roundup for 2022!

Read the next Feel Good 2022 story!

Read the Feel Good 2022 roundup!