During a meeting of the Jaffrey-Rindge Lions Club last week, the club made two donations to community organizations – the Jaffrey Fire Department and the New Hampshire DogSight Project.

The Lions provided $1,000 for DogSight, a program of the New Hampshire Lions that provides support to Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, which trains German Shepherds for the visually impaired. Lions clubs, as part of their charitable mission, have a focus on eye health and providing assistance to the community in attaining needed exams, glasses or treatments for eye issues or impairments.

Linda Piekarski, who attended the meeting with her guide dog Jewel, said that the DogSight Project was started around 2000 specifically to raise funds for Fidelco.

“When the DogSight Project started, it cost $40,000 to create one of these fine German Shepherd dogs. It now costs $65,000. And Fidelco estimates it takes 15,000 hours of training. But that’s one of the reasons she can be out in public and be so well behaved,” Piekarski said.

Piekarski said that Jewel provides her with safety as she navigates the world, and gives her the ability to go about her day on her own terms.

“She gives me independence. She gives me the ability to go where I want to go – if I can get there on foot, I can go when I want to go. And that’s unusual. Because most of the time I have to beg rides, which is wonderful if you have a lot of friends, but there are times when you just can’t get there,” Piekarski said.

The club also presented the Jaffrey Fire Department with a donation of $2,500, to be put toward fundraising the department is conducting to purchase a cardiac monitor. The department has a total fundraising goal of $50,000, and Chief David Chamberlain it has raised about $16,000 so far.

The monitor will be able to act as an electrocardiogram, which records electrical signals from the heart and can detect some conditions; and an automated external defibrillator (AED), which can analyze heart rhythm and provide an electrical shock to re-establish an effective rhythm. It can also monitor carbon monoxide levels, and has a modem that allows the department to transfer information from the machine to area hospitals to help cardiologists better prepare to receive patients and ready the most-effective treatments. 

Chamberlain said there have been multiple recent instances where staffing shortages and multiple calls in succession collided to result in longer response times for cardiac patients.

“We’ve had some recent calls we felt if we had this cardiac monitor, we would be able to assess our patients better and make quicker decisions in regard to the definitive care that they need, whether that’s notifying the incoming ambulance or making a request for a helicopter to fly them to an appropriate facility,” Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain said with a cardiac event, minutes count.

“With cardiac, time is muscle,” he said. “The more you wait, the more damage that occurs. We like to say there’s a ‘Golden Hour,’ – we like to have them in the appropriate facility within an hour.”

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.