Bill Ward has a way with wayward animals. That must be why a guide dog that needed help finding its way home Sunday turned to the lifelong Manatee resident. Ferris — a black Labrador retriever owned by Ward’s Fair Lane Acres mobile home park neighbor, Paul Styczko — showed up on Ward’s doorstep after he was accidentally left outside.
After spending several hours Monday morning trying to track down the dog’s owner, Ward reunited Ferris and Styczko, a 56-year-old Salem, Mass., resident who has been blind for 30 years. Styczko is visiting for the holidays. He and his wife have vacationed in Manatee for 15 years and plan to retire here, he said.
Styczko, a mental health and substance abuse counselor in Boston, relies on Ferris to navigate his daily 25-mile commute from Salem.
“I was very nervous about what might happen,” Styczko said. “He’s a good-looking dog, and I was afraid someone might take him. … He’s a terrific animal. He’s a part of my life.” Ferris carried tags with telephone numbers for the guide dog organization he came from, but Ward couldn’t get his calls answered during the holiday weekend. Finally, another neighbor saw a Bay News 9 report about Ferris and relayed Styczko’s telephone number to Ward.
Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/2010/12/28/2837712/guide-dog-lost-found-reunited.html#ixzz19QcaZ6vQ
