A Stockton woman thanks her pit bull for saving her and her baby’s life after the dog alerted them that their house was on fire.
Nana Chaichanhda was in bed just before midnight on Sunday when she was awakened by her pit bull Sasha. The dog was banging herself against the backdoor and barking wildly. Chaichandhda rushed to open the door — the moment she did, Sasha lunged inside. “I open it and she runs in and starts barking at me like crazy. I was like, this is weird, this is not her,” she said.
Chaichandhda looked outside of the fourplex where she lives with her cousin and 7-month-old daughter Masailah, and was stunned to see smoke and flames quickly spreading from her neighbor’s home to hers.
Rushing back inside, she scrambled to the bedroom to grab her daughter only to find that Sasha had beaten her to it.
“She already had my baby by the diaper and was dragging her off of the bed,” she said.
Grabbing her baby, Sasha, and her phone, Chaichanhda headed outside and called 911. Firefighters arrived and quickly put out the blaze, but not soon enough. Though the flames only reached the attic, Chaichanhda’s home and a neighbor’s were condemned because of the fire. She, her cousin, and her daughter have moved in with relatives who also lived in the fourplex.
Most people don’t think of pit bulls as guardians, and many consider them outright dangerous.
Chaichanhda knows this, and hopes her story will help to change people’s fear of keeping them as family pets. She says, “I owe her everything. If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have known. I would have still been in bed and things could have taken a worse turn.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
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