I had an experience this morning that I will never forget.
It was almost seven. It was a nice, peaceful morning outside, and I was having a rare day off. I was so weary yesterday that I couldn’t even walk my dog in the morning. I was sleeping well, and in my dream, everything was normal and calm.
All of a sudden, I felt something heavy on my chest. When I opened my eyes, I was still half-asleep and found my dog standing right in front of me. He put his paws on me and stared at my face quite attentively.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, closing my eyes again, thinking that he was only hungry or needed to go for a walk.
But he didn’t leave. Instead, he kept licking my cheek, moaning softly, and pawing at me like he wanted me to come. I still didn’t get why he was waking me up so much. He barked right near to my ear when I wasn’t paying attention to him, then jumped on the bed and began barking loudly and fiercely, as if he was afraid.
At that point, I opened my eyes again and saw something strange.
I looked around and smelled something bad and overpowering. I didn’t know what it was at first. But a few seconds later, my brain clicked: smoke. And it was getting stronger.
I quickly sat up, and my heart was thumping so fast I could feel it in my temples. I got out of bed, ran down the hall without shoes on, and then halted.
There was a lot of thick gray smoke coming from the hallway and into my room. The fire in the living room was blazing and crackling, taking up half the room and sending sparks flying everywhere.
The dog stood next to me and barked at the fire. Then it looked at me again, as if to say, “Hurry!”
I grabbed up the phone, called the fire department with shaky hands, and rushed outside with him immediately away.
I only realized outside, when we were safe and I was trying to recover my breath, that I would have stayed asleep if he hadn’t woken me up. and may never have gotten up.
I discovered out later that I had been pressing clothes the night before and was too exhausted to turn off the iron. It was left on the clothes, which is what caused the fire.
I didn’t remember anything. But my dog smelled the smoke before I did and did everything he could to wake me up.
I might not be able to share this story right now if he hadn’t been there.