Dog who performed a miracle for my son

MIRACLE by Amanda Leask (Ebury) SARAH FOOT

AMANDA LEASK was the sort of woman to inspire uncomfortable feelings of envy. Clever, attractive and married to a man who adored her, she was, as her husband would whisper in her ear at night, ‘living the dream’.

But within little more than a year, her happy life flipped over like a coin.

After IVF, she became pregnant with twin boys, but there were difficulties and she gave birth at just 29 weeks. Baby Ty lived for 26 hours. His brother, Kyle, survived, but with cerebral palsy, severe brain damage and autism. He cannot walk. He cannot speak. He has never said ‘Mummy’.

The heartbreak and exhausting work involved in looking after a disabled child took its toll. Her marriage came close to ending. But then there was a miracle.

Amanda, who had always been passionate about animals, read on the internet about dogs rescued from the meat trade in Thailand. They had been heading for a dreadful death because of a Thai belief that the adrenaline which courses through a dog’s veins when it is skinned alive makes the men who eat its meat more virile.

One picture touched her especially. It was of a scrap of a white dog with pointy ears who had his head and front leg dangling through a rusty cage. There was something about him — the way there was still majesty in his battered body — that impelled Amanda to save him. After eight weeks’ searching online, she tracked him to a Thai rescue centre, arranged for him to be flown away from danger and brought him to her home in Edinburgh.

Saved, quite literally, from the jaws of death, Amanda named him Miracle (pictured together). But it was when he settled into his new home that he truly lived up to his name.

Amanda had already looked after dozens of rescue dogs, but four-year-old Kyle seemed particularly aware of Miracle. He would giggle when Miracle wagged his tail, and the dog would respond by wagging more. If Kyle got upset, Miracle would rush to him so the little boy could be comforted by his nearness.

Most extraordinary was the way Kyle, who had always been locked in his own little world and rarely looked his parents in the eye, began to maintain eye contact with Miracle.

Amanda watched, amazed, as the two gazed at each other — it was a tiny step, but a significant one. She believes Miracle saw a kindred spirit in her son. He was broken himself so he knew how to respond to this broken child. Some special alchemy was at work. Possibly two wrongs — the brutality to an animal, the cruel hand a little boy had been dealt — made some sort of right.

Rescuing Miracle and other dogs, Amanda acknowledges, helps her to find solace because, although she cannot give her son the life she would wish, she can provide these desperate animals with a happier existence.

Her story had me in tears, but also in awe at how she looks after her beloved son while saving the lives of dogs like Miracle with such grace and courage. Enviable qualities indeed.