A four-year-old dachshund is being hailed as a hero after he saved his neighbor’s family from a house fire by alerting them to the danger early Sunday morning.
Bethel, Connecticut, resident Robin Houser said that the family dog named Jasper started barking nonstop at around 3:30 a.m., NBC New York reported.
“He was jumping on my husband’s head. He wouldn’t give it up,” said Houser.
But Jasper’s incessant barking paid off after Houser’s husband went outside to see if there was anything that spooked the pooch.
“That’s when he noticed the neighbor’s porch was on fire,” Houser said.
The Zanbeli family next door was sleeping in their beds when the fire broke out on their back porch, and are grateful for the dog and the neighbors for saving the day.
“He was amazing. His dog started to bark a lot and wake up, and they called 911 and saved our lives,” said Izabella Zanbeli.
Zanbeli said she and her two children waited anxiously in their front yard as firefighters knocked out the fire. Fortunately, the damage was contained to a small corner of the back porch.
Houser said Jasper did not calm down until the firefighters arrived.
Firefighters have not yet found out what caused the fire, but the Zanbeli family says they are upgrading all their smoke detectors, either by replacing the batteries or replacing the smoke detectors entirely.
Jasper is not the only heroic dog in Connecticut to save a family’s life from a fire. In January, a fire victim from Connecticut credited his dog Bubba for saving his life from a fire, NBC Connecticut reported. Sadly, Bubba did not survive the fire.
In December 2019, a dog named Sammy saved five people from a house fire in Savannah, Georgia, the CT Post reported.