A family in Minnesota escaped with their lives after the family dog alerted its sleeping owners to a fire in the home before the blaze engulfed the house.
On Sunday, Carrie and Dave Hansen were fast asleep when their dog, Milo, pounced on their bed.
“He was up in her face, trying to get her to wake up, I guess,” Hansen told WAFB 9 News. “She was telling him to go back to bed. Finally, she noticed it was smoke in there.”
The dog apparently led Hansen’s wife to the source of the smoke.
“He ran to the garage, she followed him, and it was solid smoke in there,” Hansen said.
That’s when Carrie went to wake her husband up.
“We were pretty sound asleep,” Dave Hansen told Duluth News Tribune. “The fire alarm could have been going off, but if the dog didn’t wake the wife up and the wife didn’t wake me up, I still would have been lying there.”
It didn’t take long for the flames to engulf their home, forcing the family to flee the burning building.
“In my mind, I was going to put it out,” he said. “The torch tanks were laying there, and the welder was sitting there. Once the fire got around them, I was just like, ‘Time to go.’”
The fire destroyed the home along with a new car in the garage, causing an estimated US$750,000 in damage. However, no one was injured in the blaze, perhaps only for Milo’s actions.
“You always hear how your dog will save your life,” Carrie told the newspaper, “And this dog … I just can’t believe it.”