From the archives: This story was last updated in March 2019.
Dogs are not only wonderful companions but also intuitive pets that, most times, can sense if something is wrong before it happens! This dog is truly special, for she warned her owner when she detected something was amiss, and it saved her owner’s life!Alhanna Butler, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, was advised by her friends to get rid of her dog, named Keola, an Akita Inu, when she became pregnant. But she loved her a lot, and luckily, she didn’t.
The young mom and her baby wouldn’t have survived were it not for her intuitive and faithful dog.
One day, Alhanna returned from the hospital after complaining to the doctors of back pain. But they had put it off, attributing it to various common causes.
“I was 20 weeks pregnant and had been so unwell for weeks, I couldn’t walk… and I hadn’t kept anything down for weeks,” Alhanna, a healthcare assistant, wrote on Facebook. “Doctors put it down to me being so small and my spine not being able to manage with the extra weight well and just normal pregnancy symptoms but Keola wouldn’t leave my side.”
The intuitive dog sensed something was amiss. Keola constantly nudged Alhanna, stared at her crying, and waited by her side while she was in the bathroom, in her way of telling her that something was wrong.
“Keola looked so sad and I knew something was bothering her. She just sat there staring at me and wouldn’t let me go anywhere alone.” She whined till her owner finally paid heed to her signal and made a trip to the hospital.
It turned out Keola was right. Alhanna fainted and nearly lost her life upon arriving at the hospital. She was admitted to intensive care, passing out and regaining her consciousness while on morphine.
“Turns out my backache was due to a double kidney infection, and because it was untreated for so long, it was one of the worst cases they had ever seen,” she said.
“On top of that I had an antibiotic resistant bug that had only ever affected one other person in the UK.”
Doctors told her she wouldn’t have made it if she hadn’t come to the hospital. “It was killing me and the doctors told me if I had left it any longer I would have died and more than likely my son also.”
“I have absolutely no doubt that both me and Lincoln would not be here today if it wasn’t for Keola,” she opined.
Thanks to Keola, the happy mom and her son, Lincoln, are alive. Now, the loyal dog spends all of her time by Alhanna’s son’s side. Alhanna announced her wholehearted thanks to Keola in a heartwarming video post that went viral.
“She is our hero, his guardian angel and we will forever be in her debt,” she said. “We were both over the moon and we realized that Keola was truly a special dog who could detect things that we couldn’t.”
