Home alone Wednesday afternoon, a senior Pit Bull named Sadie sensed that something was very wrong in her Westchester County, N.Y. house. She dug out a wooden block keeping a sliding door shut and ran outside, knocking down a fence as she bolted out of the yard.
Someone a few blocks away called the police when they heard Sadie’s incessant barking. When officers arrived, Sadie ran off and took them “through several streets, and then lead them back to the dog’s residence into the backyard,” Lt. Lawrence Rotta with the Tuckahoe Police Department told WABC.
The officers noticed the broken fence as well as claw marks and blood on the sliding glass door. They also noticed the strong odor of gas coming from the basement. The officers called the Eastchester Fire Department and Con Edison, which arrived at the house and confirmed a gas leak.
Sadie’s owner, Serena Costello, was at work and her 4-year-old daughter was with a sitter when a friend called her and told her about all the activity at her house.
Sadie “is our hero,” Costello told WABC. She said that in 11 years, her dog had never run away before. “It’s just so out of character for her to do. She saved our lives.”
Rotta agreed. “The dog saved the house from a potential gas explosion and gas leak,” he told WABC. “Natural gas inside the house can accumulate to the point where, God forbid, someone would come home and turn on a light switch, and there could be a potential explosion,” he told News12.
The police had to give Costello a summons for having an unleashed dog. But after ConEd determined there was a gas leak, one of the officers “took the summons and ripped it up,” Costello told WABC. The leak has been repaired.
Good girl, Sadie, and many thanks to WABC, News12 and CBS New York for covering this positive Pit Bull story.
Photo via @ABC7NY/Twitter