‘She’s pretty special to us’
A family in Iowa was saved from carbon monoxide poisoning after their dog altered them to a gas leak that could’ve proved fatal.
Brad Harbert, 37, was clued onto the danger when his husky and coonhound mix named Roxy woke him in the middle of the night.
“She just was jumping off my bed, jumping back up on the bed,” the father told NBC News affiliate WHO13.
“When I started to come to, I was hearing an alarm, and it wasn’t the smoke alarm.”
Roxy was reacting to the carbon monoxide detector that the sleeping family might have otherwise missed. While Harbert got out of bed, Roxy went to check on his son Jackson who was also asleep.
“I jumped out of bed. Right when I did, Roxy came out to the hallway and she scratched Jackson’s door to see if he was OK,” he explained.
Upon realising that the detector “chirps four times” upon detecting the gas, Harbert rushed his father, son, and of course Roxy, out of the house.
Ankeny Fire Department was at the scene within minutes but they could not locate the source of the leak. It wasn’t until MidAmerican Energy arrived that they realised it was coming from Harbert’s electric and gas fireplace.
When quizzed about his dog’s heroism, Harbert gushed: “She’s pretty special to us.”
He continued: “I could tell something was wrong that night that she woke me up and just her actions, she was kind of shivering and just really concerned that we would get outside.”
“[I’m] very, very happy to have a dog and very happy to have her,’ he concluded.
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