My dogs are lifesavers!
By mentalward
@mentalward (14691)
United States
December 13, 2012 7:15am CST
Even though I was awake at the time, my dogs saved the day.
I was in my room perusing the internet on my netbook when my dogs began barking and growling out in the hall. I thought they were playing with my husband because he was working from home today, in his room. But, since they did not stop barking and growling, I went out to investigate.
I saw my oldest dog in the hallway, barking and jumping around. My youngest was in my office, barking and growling at the desktop computer. I went into the office, thinking that maybe a rodent (squirrel, chipmunk, field mouse) had somehow gotten into the house and was trapped in my office but it wasn't that.
As soon as I walked into the office, I smelled burning plastic and realized that the desktop was not running. We keep it on because we can print things from our laptops as long as the desktop is running. The desktop was burning and it was only a matter of minutes, most likely, before we had a bonafied electrical fire in there!
Imagine if this had happened at night while everyone was asleep or, worse, if no one was home but my dogs??? I shudder every time I think of that.
But, my little Maltese girls saved the day! I'm going to be making them their favorite treats (aside from people food), peanut butter dog treats. They've definitely earned them!
So, how about it? Do you have any "the dog saved the day" stories? How about cat? I'm definitely going to be changing my habit of leaving certain things plugged in and running from now on!
5 people like this
14 responses
@savak03 (6684)
• United States
14 Dec 12
I have one.
Back when my fifth child was just a baby, still crawling to get around, we moved into a new house. The previous tenants of the house were friends of mine and they asked if I would take care of their dog until they could find it a home because where they were moving would not allow pets.
This poor little dog was, I thought, the ugliest mutt I had ever seen but I said I would let him stay for awhile.
The house had an enclosed porch but the floor of the porch had a big hole in it where someone had dropped a transmission to a car through the floor. The transmission was still in the hole. Because of the hazard we always kept the door closed so the baby wouldn't get out there and fall in.
One day I heard this dog barking and growling and no matter how much I hollered at him he would not shut up. In fact the sound was kind of muffled so I went to see what he was barking at. When I walked into the living room I immediately noticed the front door had been left open to the porch and the sounds were coming from there. I rushed out to the porch and found this dog gripping the diaper of the baby to keep him from tumbling into the hole. That was why his barks were muffled.
Needless to say we gave this dog a permanent home and I no longer considered him ugly.
1 person likes this
@GardenGerty (157660)
• United States
14 Dec 12
That dog had a beautiful soul. I am glad you gave him a forever home.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
19 Dec 12
WOW! That is an incredible story, savak! I love our furry family members because they are so much more intuitive than we mere humans are, well, generally speaking anyway. That ugly little mutt obviously had an incredibly beautiful soul.
Thanks so very much for sharing this story. It touched my heart. 
@GardenGerty (157660)
• United States
13 Dec 12
My niece had a cat for awhile that would lick her eyelids til she woke up when her blood sugar was going dangerously low. I am glad that your dogs got your attention and you and hubby could deal with the overheating desktop. I think we leave too many things plugged in and running at my house for sure.
@GardenGerty (157660)
• United States
14 Dec 12
I have worked with children who had to get seizure dogs. It is something about a change in odor for the diabetes alert, I think for seizures the dog see or feels the disrupted electrical impulses in the brain.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
Isn't it amazing how connected our pets are to us? I would call your niece's cat a true hero. They can detect things that even other humans can't.
My life would be so incomplete without my furry family.
1 person likes this
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
Cool! An "Alarm Cat"! Oh, how I wish my dogs would do that! I don't go to work but I do take my son to his job and I despise that alarm. I think I even said that to myself this morning... "I hate this thing!" It's not the getting up part, that's fine, it's waking up to that alarm. Maybe I should change it to sound differently but I think I'd much rather have a dog (or cat) licking me awake or even standing on me to wake me up. Actually, I can't count how many times I've opened my eyes to find a dog staring at me. I can't sleep if someone is staring at me; it always wakes me up.
As an aside, how did The Doctor get his name? I'm curious.
1 person likes this
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
13 Dec 12
as far as staring, i often wake up with coco staring at me. they say a dog knows you are awake when they see your eyes open. i think shes waiting for her morning bone treat she gets each morning. some wait to be let out i guess
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31636)
• United States
13 Dec 12
They are adorable, and so smart! Thank God they knew something was wrong and alerted you.
I used to have a dog, Hector, that I took everywhere. He was a cocker/poodle/beagle/dachshund mix and a really beautiful dog. He was caught in an animal trap one time--I hate those cruel things and took it with me and threw it away--and from then on would not let me near one. I trained him to to avoid rattlesnakes and he would stand in front of me and block my path is one was near. It wasn't exactly "save the day" but he was a wonderful guardian!
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
Hey, that very well could be a "save the day" story because who knows what would have happened if he wasn't there to warn you of the rattlesnakes! I've read enough about all snakes (after I saw the first HUGE snake here) to understand that messing with a rattlesnake can be really bad.
My girls are wonderful little hairballs. I had no idea they were smart enough to do what they did. Poor Maltese don't even make the list of 'Smartest Dogs'. 
Now if I could just train them to NOT bark at all the wildlife they can see from inside the house, that would be awesome!
Now if I could just train them to NOT bark at all the wildlife they can see from inside the house, that would be awesome!@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
13 Dec 12
coco once let me know when i lived in florida when snakes were in the yard. 
@dawnald (85135)
• Shingle Springs, California
19 Dec 12
And I read this sitting at work while the desktop is on at home. Yikes.
I think we cleaned it out one time.@mentalward (14691)
• United States
19 Dec 12
I doubt you have anything to worry about unless you're guilty of the same thing my husband is. It's his job to clean the dust out of the desktop. Well, it WAS, anyway, but he neglected it. He uses his latest surgery as an excuse but that computer wasn't cleaned in maybe a year. I know because he makes a big production out of cleaning it, making sure that I know he's actually doing something and I can't remember him doing anything with it all year. I'm sure the dust prevented the fans from working properly which, naturally, made it overheat.
So, if you haven't cleared the dust from your computer in awhile, you'd better high-tail it home!
1 person likes this
@caopaopao (12395)
• China
13 Dec 12
Hi,
I don't have any pet, dogs or cats. But I like them very much. Your dog is really so nice and clever. People say animals are man's friends, I am so sure about it. Animals are living things like human beings. They have feelings, thoughts and affection.
I am very busy now and I have no time to have pet, but my daughter likes dog very much, I promised her to buy her a dog when she was older.
Thanks for sharing , have a nice day.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
You are so very correct about them being just like us. They can get their thoughts across to us very well, even though they can't talk, at least not the way we talk. My little girls are like shadows because they follow me everywhere. I don't know what I'd do without them.
I hope your daughter gets a really wonderful dog one day. They are really wonderful companions.
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
13 Dec 12
they sure are. when no ones in the house i know id be lonely and scared without coco
@urbandekay (18278)
•
13 Dec 12
Several times my oldest dog came and found me when my mum had had a fall and could not get up
all the best, urban
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
Wow! A real lifesaver! I can't understand people who can't see how much our pets are like we are, sometimes even better. Dogs are definitely intelligent critters. Yours reminds me of a dog I saw with a woman in Walmart once. The dog had a medical harness on and was probably trained to help her because of epilepsy or something similar. They are amazing beings.
@AmbiePam (85676)
• United States
14 Dec 12
That's REALLY cool. Thinking about stories where pets saved the day I remember a story on Unsolved Mysteries. It was about pets who were able to save their owners with no explanation of how they knew to do it. One woman had a stroke in her home in a trailer park. She had a pet pot belly pig. The pig managed to open the front screen door and got three trailers over to where her son lived. The son knew something was wrong because the pig was acting manic. He then went and found his mother and called 911. Incredible.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
13 Dec 12
I'm making them their favorite treats, little peanut butter treats shaped like hearts. I'm sure they don't care what they're shaped like but I enjoy cutting out the tiny hearts before I bake them. They LOVE these things! Of course, they've already received some rawhide chewies that I had bought them for Christmas. I had to give them something right away to show them how proud I am of them.
That's awesome about the cat who alerted you to strangers or someone coming in. Pets don't always act the way we'd like them to around other people but it's great to have an "alarm" like that.
@celticeagle (159451)
• Boise, Idaho
14 Dec 12
My daughter got her favorite cat, Colbert, a Santa hat and a little fur collar. It is so cute. Ofcourse he isn't real happy with it but he endures. Today he came in my room and ran under the bed with only the fur collar on. He is one of those sort of animals(I have heard mostly dogs do this)that seems to know when we are sick. I was sick recently with bronchitis and he would come give me attention and lay down with me. He never does that except when I am sick. He is my daughter's cat. One of those one person type animals so I think it is sort of weird that he comes to me and meows around me and lays by me for awhile when I am sick.
@JenInTN (27514)
• United States
15 Dec 12
WOw! I haven't got any current save the day stories but my grandparents had a Collie when I was very little that did a good deed. We lived next to a creek and I wandered down the bank of it. The dog was with me and my grandparents said the only way they found me was that he kept barking. I was too young to remember it but it was a story they liked to tell.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
19 Dec 12
I'm glad your grandparents had that Collie! That's a story that you can pass down to your grandchildren! Dogs are amazing creatures. They are tuned into things even we humans can't see most of the time.
@cerebellum (3863)
• United States
14 Dec 12
You were very lucky that they got upset and you paid attention to them. Most of the time people think there is a mundane excuse for their reactions and would't go check it out. I used to have cats but they never really saved me. One saved the other though. I was on the phone and one was in the cellar, and one was prancing around and cring for me to follow him down the stairs. When I did the other cat (not too smart) was haninging upside down from the pipes. Somehow she got caught in the pipes, but I have no idea why she was up there. I was laughing so hard I had to call my husband to come help me get her down!
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
13 Dec 12
I can't think of a story right off, but I'm so glad your doggies knew there was danger. They are very protective. My babies live outside. If it gets too cold Rosie will have to come in the basement. We have a split level ranch house. She would not do well up here cause she has bad manners. She ruined our carpet in the other house.
One of my friends has seizures. Her dog alerts her before she has the seizure so she can lay down. He wasn't trained to do that, she just figured out that was what he was doing. He's a lab.
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
19 Dec 12
Wow, PQ! That's an amazing story about the dog alerting your friend without any training. It just proves how intuitive they are. I've never thought of any dog as merely a "dog". They've proven that they are so much more. I've only had one brief period of my life when I didn't have a furry, tail-wagging friend live with me and that was only because it was one of the harder times in my life and I could not care for a dog like they deserve.
You know, thinking back on the night I developed BPPV (the vertigo issue), when it first hit me, my dogs went running out of my bedroom. I wasn't thinking about them at the time, since the world was spinning even when I closed my eyes but I believe they went into my husband's room to let him know something was wrong. He did rush into my bedroom right after they left my room. I remember saying "help" but not very loud and, under normal circumstances, that would not have made my husband come to check on me. I think my dogs had something to do with that as well.
I love those Labs. I've had quite a few friends who either own one now or have in the past. They're very intelligent and terrific guard dogs. I'm happy with my tiny girls because they don't eat me out of house and home.
@Morleyhunt (21736)
• Canada
18 Dec 15
My dog might not have saved the day, but she sure lets me know if there is someone nearby.
