Tiny dog rescued after saving family from burning home

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes courage walks on four tiny feet and then barks. When a fire started in her home, that's what Chloe did — bark to alert her human family to the danger.

 

The fire erupted in the garage early one morning in late June. Smelling the smoke, Chloe began a barking marathon, waking the home's three humans.

"My mom's little five pound Chihuahua started barking when she saw the smoke," Devon Whittlesey told ABC News. If not for the little dog's barking, she might not have made it out alive, she said.

"She claws at us when she wants something, and she just kept doing it until we woke up," Bob Fischer, one of Chloe's owners, told KOMO News, "and then we looked up and there was smoke everywhere."

Family members clambered out of a bedroom window with one of their three pooches, but poor little Chloe was still trapped inside along with another dog, according to Life With Dogs.

Chloe was left behind in the house, and Fischer said they couldn't find her. Firefighters at the scene were doubtful that they would find the little chihuahua alive.

"I told (my wife), I said, 'she's hiding somewhere and she's going to be alive.' The firefighters came over and they said, 'no way. She has too much smoke. She's probably gone, too,'" Fischer said.

Fortunately, Fischer's was right, and apparently Chloe is one scrappy little pooch — firefighters pulled her out of the fire-ravaged home an hour or so after crews extinguished the fire, Assistant Fire Chief Ed Plumlee of South King County Fire and Rescue told KOMO.

"She's got 250 pounds in that little four-pound body," said Tracie Fox, Chloe's other owner. "No doubt she saved us."

Sadly, Whittlesey's dog — a pit bull terrier mix, didn't survive.

The home is a total loss, Plumlee said. Flames also damaged the side of a neighboring house and front yard before fire crews were able to control the blaze, KOMO News reports.

After being treated for minor smoke inhalation at a hospital, Fischer and Fox were released. They were reunited with little Chloe when they arrived back at the scene.

"Chloe saved us," added Whittlesey. "We wouldn't have lived. If the flames wouldn't have got us, the smoke would've."

(Digital Journal - July 9, 2014)