This week, Humankind featured an emotional support dental dog, a baby raccoon rescue, a kid umpire, a dog’s record-breaking tongue, and a traveling grandma and grandson.Watch as baby raccoons are rescued, a dental assistant dog helps relax kids, a grandma and grandson travel to all the National Parks, and more.
Proving that dreams can come true at any age, 93-year-old Joy Ryan, who’d never seen a mountain or the ocean before, traveled to all the national parks in the U.S. with her grandson, Brad, over the course of eight years. “I called her and I said, ‘Do you want to go see your first mountain?’ Her answer was, ‘What time are you picking me up?'” said Brad Ryan. “A lot of grandparents, they’d have answered like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m 85, go camp with somebody your own age.’ She said, ‘Absolutely, I will go.'”Since beginning their journey together, Joy Ryan, a.k.a. Grandma Joy, has ziplined in West Virginia, white-river rafted in Alaska, rolled down sand dunes in Colorado, and witnessed moose charging in Montana.“It’s never too late,” Grandma Joy said. “If you only get a week, so what? What would you have if you had just stayed at home that week?”
Talking of inspirational people, 8-year-old Lathan Williams from Hammond, Louisiana, is waiting on confirmation that he’s a Guinness World Record breaker as the youngest-ever baseball umpire. Now a social media celebrity, Williams has already been recognized by Wendelstedt Umpire School, where he’s been offered a future scholarship. Speaking of Guinness World Records, Zoey, a Labrador/German shepherd mix, has been confirmed as a world record-breaker for the longest tongue of any living dog, measuring 5 inches from the tip of her snout to the tip of her tongue. That’s one slobbery kiss in waiting.
In other canine news, a trained emotional assistant dental dog is making going to the dentist less traumatic for kids in Ecuador. Aldo is a welcome sight at the Parque Dental clinic, where he helps reduce stress and anxiety for young patients while they get their dental work done. Last but not least, in Portland, Oregon, Wendy Gatlin heard an animal scratching inside the walls of her home for weeks. After closing up the hole where the creature was getting in and out, she realized she’d separated a mother raccoon, which she nicknamed Rocky, from her babies. On calling animal control officers for help, they offered to euthanize the animals. Instead, she and a friend took matters into their own hands by cutting holes in the side of the house to rescue the babies and reunite them with their mom.
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