It started out like any other day.
Howard King put in a few hours at the office where he volunteers, ran some errands, then returned home. He'd just started to come in from the garage with a bag of groceries when he got a strange feeling.
"The last thing I remember, the only thing I remember, is thinking, 'I'm going to fall,'" said King, the retired University of Michigan football public-address announcer known as "the voice of Michigan Stadium."
King, 80, came to to find himself bleeding badly from gashes on his head where he'd hit the garage floor after falling unconscious. Licensed painter Bert Wichman, who had been working in the house, was leaning over him.
Wichman took King to the emergency room where King was diagnosed with a stroke. Still in rehab three weeks after the accident, he credits his dog, Gunny, for saving his life.
"Gunny to me was a great hero," he said, of the 5- or 6-year-old Treeing Walker Coonhound-German Shepherd mix.
"This was a dog that was not trained to do this, that was not demonstrative. If he had not gotten Bert the painter, it would have been another hour before anyone came. I could have bled out."
Wichman said he'd been painting in the bedroom when he saw King's car pull in the driveway. Sometime after, an agitated Gunny appeared.
"He ran in the bedroom, ran back out, ran in the bedroom, ran back out. He notified me that something was not right," Wichman said. "The dog is pretty quiet, so it was out of character. Even coming to me was out of character because I was a guest in the house." Wichman said he followed the dog to the kitchen, where the back door was open. Gunny stood stiffly, looking out to the garage. The painter went to the garage and found King lying in a pool of blood.
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