When people say pets are part of the family, that’s no exaggeration, and this photograph proves it. Gemini was already safe, but one moment of fear changed everything.
On January 30, 2015, a fire broke out on the second floor of their home in Reading, Pennsylvania. Amanda Moser, 31, was asleep when her husband, Shamel English, alerted her to the smoke. The couple acted quickly and managed to get out safely with their two pit bulls, but amid the smoke and confusion, little Gemini got frightened and ran back inside the burning house.
“She must have gotten scared and run straight back into the house”.
Firefighters managed to find the two-year-old pit bull and get her out. They tried to revive her on the sidewalk, but she had inhaled too much smoke. Gemini died, and her owner held her in his arms.
The photograph of that moment would go on to spread across the internet: Shamel is seen holding the motionless dog against his chest before carrying her to the porch of a nearby house and covering her body with a blanket.
“She was more than a dog; she was part of our family”, he said, devastated.
And there was a story behind those words. The family had found Gemini abandoned in an alley when she was only about three weeks old. They took her home, and over the next two years she became another member of the family. A neighbor, Myra Montanez, would remember her as a happy little dog whom everyone loved.
Gemini was not the only victim. Four other Chihuahuas died in the fire, while Poe, the family’s other pit bull, survived and was sheltered on a neighbor’s porch.
The flames did not physically injure them; however, heartache is much harder to heal.