Her Hero : Butch the Terrier Credited With Saving Life of Owner’s Grandmother

He growls at his vet, he once bit the tail off the family rabbit and he “wasn’t No. 1 in (obedience) class or anything,” his owner said.

But Butch the Terrier is No. 1 with Nellie Johnston, and on Wednesday, that was the number that counted.

The 4-year-old dog, which weighs less than a family-sized sack of kibble, saved the 93-year-old widow from bleeding to death last February after she suffered a heart “episode” and struck her head as she fell.

And Wednesday, the Jack Russell terrier became the fifth and smallest dog to win the Hero Dog Bruce Farrell Award for gallantry, awarded by the Los Angeles Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Pauline De Farrell, whose own late, lamented dog Bruce, a Labrador-Newfoundland mix, saved her life three times before he died of injuries suffered in the last incident.

In his honor, De Farrell instituted the award: a brass plaque, a $100 check and a day’s doting attention by animal lovers.

To all of that, Butch seemed indifferent, understandably; he doesn’t even get to keep the check.

“I think he’s going to have to donate some of it to the SPCA,” and to saving wild horses slated to be shot on federal lands, said his owner, Ann Lian, Johnston’s granddaughter.

Lian was asleep in their Westwood home one morning in February when Johnston got up at 5:30 to make coffee as usual, suffered a heart irregularity and fell to the floor, where she lay unconscious in her own blood.

For 20 or 25 minutes, while the other dog--a German shepherd--slept, Butch ran frantically “from room to room,” said Lian, “barking in our faces” in spite of being severely shushed by Lian and her sister, Leslie.

Finally, when the dog kept leaping against the kitchen door, Lian followed him out, “just like (in) ‘Lassie,’ ” and found her grandmother. The doctor said that if the dog had not alerted them, “it might not have been in time.”

Butch has helped Johnston through her recuperation, and on Wednesday she said she felt “great” for both of them. She stroked his muzzle and chucked him under the chin. Butch licked her hand and then squirmed away.

“He’s kind of a little terror at other times,” Lian said. “He’s not the hero all the time.” But he is “smart and he’s persistent.” Without his vigilance, Leslie Lian said, they “would have let my grandmother lie in her own blood.”

But, just as no man is a hero to his valet, no dog is completely a hero to its vet.

Dr. Janet Shulman was at SPCA’s headquarters to watch her patient’s moment of glory--the same patient that snarls when those two make eye contact.

“Hi, Butch,” she said cheerily. “Are we at peace today?” Butch growled.