Hero Dog Helps Save Iowa Family From Carbon Monoxide
A family of four are alive today because of their heroic dog. The carbon monoxide leak started inside the house with less than 3% oxygen, this could have been a fatal situation for the family. The dog, Roxy, is believed to have saved their lives by waking them up just in time with his barks.
A family in Des Moines, Iowa was protected from the poisonous effects of carbon monoxide, thanks to their dog, which alerted them to the potentially-deadly leak.
Brad Harbert realized something was wrong when his husky and coonhound mix woke him up in the middle of the night, which was out of character for her.
‘She just was jumping off my bed, jumping back up on the bed,’ he told WHO13, the NBC affiliate in Des Moines. ‘When I started to come to, I was hearing an alarm, and it wasn’t the smoke alarm.’
Harbert explained that his dog is mild-mannered and rarely barks, though she does howl when you ask her to speak.
Harbert realized his dog was reacting to the carbon monoxide detector that was going off. When he got up, Roxy went to check on his son.
‘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.
Harbert read the front of a detector and learned that it ‘chirps four times’ when there is carbon monoxide in the house.
Immediately after the unknown gas was found in his house, he got his father, son, and dog out of the house and called 911. In order to determine where the poison may be coming from, Ankeny Fire Department arrived shortly thereafter. However, they couldn’t figure it out immediately.
MidAmerican Energy came to Harbert’s home and determined the carbon monoxide was leaking from Harbert’s electric and gas fireplace.
Carbon monoxide poisoning, which is not connected to fires or smoking, but it kills more than 400 people every year in the US. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Harbert got choked up while talking about Roxy’s heroism, saying: ‘She’s pretty special to us.’
‘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,’ he added.
Harbert advises other people to get working carbon monoxide detectors and have their fireplaces regularly serviced because this will protect themselves from an odorless gas.
He said “I’m very, very happy to have a dog and very happy to have her.”