Laura Smith was sound asleep in the early morning hours of March 4 when she was awakened by Chrome, a dog she’d recently adopted from Bastrop County Animal Control in Texas.
Thinking he needed to go out, Smith opened her bedroom door — and saw the other side of her house in flames.
“Chrome woke me up so I could get my two boys, who were closer to the fire, and myself out of the house,” Smith wrote in a thank you message to the Bastrop shelter.
Smith has another senior dog who did not wake up and alert her to the fire. So it’s thanks to Chrome, who appears to be a Pit Bull mix, that Smith and her two-legged and four-legged family members are alive today. “He is without a doubt my hero,” she wrote. “We are so blessed.”
She added Chrome to her family after seeing him during an adoption event at the grand opening of a store. “We were meant to be,” she wrote in the message. “I rescued Chrome, but he saved us.”
Unfortunately, Smith’s house was severely damaged in the fire and the family lost most of its belongings. The Bastrop shelter has launched an online fundraising campaign to help the Smiths start over.
Chrome isn’t the only rescued dog who has “pawed it forward” by saving his new family in return. Meet three other dogs who also saved their adopters’ lives.
Photo: Bastrop County Animal Control and Shelter Facebook page