Felicity Finch went to meet Bandit, a truly remarkable dog…
Stephen Markham was born with a heart defect. By the time he was twelve, he was spending more and more time in hospital. Regular visits from a special dog who called in to see patients on hospital visit cheered helped Stephen immensely. When he left hospital, his mum, Sue, bought him a Lazzo Apso dog. She was called Bandit, and played a very important part in what was to be the last year of Stephen’s life.
Stephen’s 17 year old sister Jessica recalls, "Bandit used to lie there all day and all night if she had to, she be there for him to stroke, but she’d never put herself in his face, like she would with others - she was very sensitive to his situation."
Bandit helped Stephen in ways the family could not. Sue says, "Stephen thought the family was always judging him and wondering why he didn’t do things to help himself - but the dog never asked questions. The dog was there for Stephen and for no other reason."
Jessica remembers, "Stephen would be very very ill, no-one quite understood what was wrong - and he didn’t know. He’d get very agitated, not talk to us about it at all - but it was a real comfort to know that the dog was with him - she was there for him when he wouldn’t let us be…"
Inevitably, Stephen’s parents spent a lot of time with their son in hospital. It was a difficult time for Jessica and her other brother, "Bandit was helpful - it sounds really sad - but someone there to talk to! When you’ve got someone really ill in your family you feel you can’t unburden yourself on your parents because they’ve got so many other things to worry about. If you’re really upset, the dog is always there for you."
Jessica knows that she will be very upset when Bandit dies, "It will be another part of losing Stephen - something that meant a lot to him. At the time he died, she lay by his bed for two weeks, howling and crying waiting for him to come back. She did realise he was gone and wasn’t coming back…"
Sue feels that the whole family benefited from Bandit’s presence, "Stephen was very non-communicative, and very ill - the combination was always a worry to me, and a cause of frustration. He wasn’t telling me, and therefore I couldn’t help him, Somehow, the dog was always there and would put a smile on my face when I saw no reason to smile!"
Bandit could do for Stephen what others found difficult. Jessica, "He forgot for a while that he was ill with the dog. But the dog treated him as she did everyone else - Stephen wanted to be treated as a normal teenager and Bandit understood that."
Some time after Stephen had died, Sue decided to take Bandit to visit hospitals. Zoe, who is paralysed from the neck down and only has feeling in her face, sees Bandit regularly, "I put Bandit next to her face, so she can feel her," says Sue. "When she comes in she brightens my day up," says Zoe, and her mum, Pearl says, "She brightens her up, you can see it in her eyes, she sort of becomes the Zoe prior to the injury. It puts a bit of Zoe back into Zoe…"
