Powerful Waves

OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT SHE snores as loudly as a freight train, Holly was always the perfect traveling companion. Benny Gerlock, a 59-yearold long-haul truck driver based in Rock Hall, Maryland, wouldn’t leave home without her—even though Holly was his six-year-old chocolate-colored Chesapeake Bay retriever.

They traveled thousands of miles together, and Holly acted as if she owned the rig. She insisted on using the driver’s side door, crawling over Gerlock’s lap to get to her spot riding shotgun. She even slept in her own bed, tucked in the back of the coach.

In fact, Holly was snoring away on the evening of November 26, 2013, while she and Gerlock were hauling a load on I-35 East, just outside Dallas. At around 8 p.m., something went wrong— Gerlock either had a medical emergency or just lost control of the truck, and he rammed into a concrete highway support. Gerlock died almost instantly.

Holly, back in her bed, had to be cut out of the truck by rescue workers. By some kind of canine miracle, she survived unharmed, but she was traumatized. She was taken to a Dallas animal shelter. When word got back to Rock Hall, the residents agreed that Holly needed to come home.

“I know that Benny would have done this for us, so there was no question about us doing this for him,” a neighbor, Sandy Nordhoff, told myeasternshoremd.com.

Though Rock Hall, a town of roughly 1,300 on the Chesapeake Bay, sees its share of tourists and wealthy visitors, it is still at heart a blue-collar

“Benny would have done this for us, so there was no question about us doing this for him.”