Foster Dog Saves Family Home From Fire
By Joe Wilkes
Alice Zeitz of Newfane, NY decided to foster a dog before the holidays. The dog, a black mixed breed named Grace, had been left tied to a stop sign alongside her puppies and been saved by a rescue organization, the Akron Canine Rescued Angels. Zeitz had fostered about 100 dogs through the program, but didn’t realize how special Grace would be.
A couple of days before Christmas, Zeitz threw some laundry into her basement washer and dryer and headed upstairs to be with her fiancé and two children, ages 8 and 3. Before long, Grace began running to the basement and back, clearly agitated. They finally followed the barking dog down to the basement and saw that the washer had begun smoking and had caught on fire. Grace’s keen nose had smelled the smoke even before the smoke detector and she warned the family in time before any serious damage to the house or any injury to the family had occurred.
Needless to say, Grace’s foster situation has become permanent. Zeitz said even before Grace’s heroic action she felt a special bond with the dog, and now Grace has joined the family, who continues to foster rescued dogs. In a story in The Buffalo News, Zeitz is quoted as saying “A lot of people have this image that shelter dogs or dogs in rescue are all bad, that they’re in the rescue because they did something wrong, and that is totally not the case. It’s the same with Rottweilers and pit bulls. A lot of people have the image that they are nasty dogs. We have a saying, ‘Judge the deed, not the breed,’ because it’s all in how they are raised.”
Congratulations to Grace on her new home with Alice and her family. Clearly it takes a hero to know a hero.
