Rescue Dog Returns Favor By Saving Family

“Man’s best friend” doesn’t even begin to describe the bond that has developed between a 3-month-old Husky mix named Hunter and the Tim McCarty family of five.

How about familial? Love at first sight? What about deep, mutual gratitude that will forever tether them?

Wouldn’t it would be sweet to think Hunter – a  rescue puppy who had squirmed right into the hearts of the Grosse Pointe Woods family of five almost the moment they met him at a Michigan Humane Society adoption center three weeks earlier – was just reciprocating around midnight on March 5 when his whining alerted his new family to a potentially deadly gas leak?

That in the dynamic between humans and their canines – or canines and their families – Hunter’s life-saving determination was just sweet karma?

Hunter smelled gas that was seeping into the house from a stove burner accidentally left on when the family had cooked dinner about six hours earlier, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Because the burner was on its lowest setting, the flame had gone out. No one noticed that the knob was in the “on” position.

The pooch woke Jill McClarty with his continual whining. She thought he just needed to do his business, so she let him outside. Back inside, he began crying again with what must seem to the family, in retrospect, firm resolve.

“He was in the hallway almost doing circles and then he sat next to the stove and started crying,” Tim McClarty told the newspaper.

“My wife turned on the light and she saw not only was the stove turned on, but at that instant she smelled gas," he said. "We were in shock that it had been running for hours. We were shocked, and grateful more than you can imagine.”

They’d almost passed the dog over at the shelter at the Humane Society’s off-site adoption center a Petco store in Sterling Heights. The pup’s sibling had caught the family’s eye until Hunter started working his charm.

Was it destiny?