It’s not every day a person can say they are alive thanks to a pet, but Mike Pickard, from Dunsmuir, Calif., owes his life to Molly, a Golden retriever who saved the man from dying in a house fire.
On March 20, 2014, Pickard emptied his wood stove of coals and placed them in the garbage in his garage. The man thought the coals had cooled down and he was saving them to mix them with fertilizer, but little did he know that just a few hours later, those same coals would ignite a dangerous fire that will take over part of his garage.
“At about ten o’clock that night, my dog Molly started barking and pulling at the sheets of my bed,” Pickard told Mount Shasta Herald. “My neighbor Jeff [Rooney] was banging at the front door, yelling for me to get out of the house.”
Pickard and Molly were in the bedroom located above the garage, but thanks to the sheet rock used to cover the garage’s walls and ceiling, the man and the pet had enough time to run out of the house unharmed.
“My dog didn’t even leave until I did,” said Pickard. “She just stood at the door and waited until I was out and called her… She hasn’t even had any formal training or anything like that.”
Once both residents were safe outside the burning property, the pet owner and his neighbor tried to put out the fire.
Dunsmuir Firefighters were called to the home and they arrived within minutes. Thanks to them the fire was contained quickly and the blaze did not progress past the garage.
The home sustained extensive electrical and sheet rock damage, but thankfully no lives were lost.
Molly is now considered a hero and thanks to her Pickard is alive and well.
