Lori Hensley sat on the donated couch in a rented apartment and kept it together for almost an hour.
But then, as she narrated the story of when she ran into her burning home and tried to open windows and feel along the walls in every room to rescue the dogs who had comforted her and her daughters for so long, she wept.
That’s when one of her daughters, 10-year-old Mckenna — without saying even one word — arose from the sofa and pulled Ziggy the Doberman along on his leash behind her. She silently approached her mom and rubbed her hand down her back. Ziggy, without prompting, laid his head in Lori’s lap.
And in a Norman Rockwell-esque tableau, this family came together for about the ten-thousandth time since July 13, the day a fire caused by an electrical appliance ripped through their Galena home. The blaze destroyed everything they owned, killing four dogs and stealing every sense of security this little family of three had ever known.
Yet Hensley finds it in her heart to be grateful. The girls’ father had picked them up from the house less than an hour before she came home to find it filled with smoke.
“I feel like this is a reset on my life,” the 55-year-old professional dog trainer said, sitting at the kitchen table inside their temporary home in a Sunbury apartment. “I have my girls. And thank God the fire didn’t happen at night. And thank God they weren’t there to see it. It changes your perspective on life, something like this. We realize what matters.”
Nevertheless, the life of this dog trainer — who has worked with so many of Greatrer Columbus’ elites over the years that she even signs nondisclosure agreements about the care of their pets — has been upended since the fire.
Although Hensley ran inside the burning ranch home and tried to rescue them, Dream, the family’s Whippet, and Wiggles, a French bulldog mix, died in the fire. So, too, did two dogs that Hensley had been boarding for a client.
