Good dog gives man a reason to get up every day
To look at them, it’s hard to know who saved whom. The middle-aged man and the young pup.
Demetrius Lonberger spent two years living on the street, addicted to drugs and alcohol. Dolly, a 4-year-old boxer-retriever-labrador mix was also found on the street, abused and abandoned.
If ever two living things needed each other, Demetrius and Dolly did.
“I was homeless, she was homeless, and now we have each other. She’s meant everything to me,” the 54-year-old longtime laborer said, as he scratched the pup’s ears and gave her a kiss on the nose.
Today, he and his four-legged roommate live in a furnished one-bedroom apartment at Penn Place, a full-service residential facility for the formerly homeless. But it was a journey to get here.
Lonberger, a client of Horizon House, was one of the first people to move into the building at 14th and Pennsylvania streets a year ago.
It should have been a happy time for him, and it was good to get off the street, he said, but he was undergoing treatment for cancer and suffering from depression. He was lonely.
When a staff member at Penn Place learned of his love for dogs, she suggested he consider adopting one from the Humane Society.
His first meeting with Dolly didn’t go too well, he said. She was standoffish, unsure whether she could trust him. She did, however, nibble treats from his hand. Staff told him Dolly was housetrained and had a laid-back personality to match his own.
Lonberger was smitten. The very next day, he returned, convinced she was the dog for him. She apparently had had time to think about it as well and let her