Donna Carberry couldn’t smell the smoke. She had lost her sense of smell as a permanent aftereffect of COVID-19, so she had no way of knowing that her home in Spokane, Washington, was already on fire.
Shadow, her three-year-old German shepherd, did. First, he tried to alert her gently. ““He was trying to tell me nicely, but I didn’t understand””, she said. Then he began hitting the back door with his body until Donna went to see. When she opened it, the barn had already burned down and the fire was climbing the stairs and devouring one side of the house.
They had to get out, but her cat, Socksy, was missing, and she couldn’t reach him. Shadow stepped in again: he gently placed his paw on the animal to hold him still while she picked him up and carried him to safety. The truck and horse trailer burned in the driveway. ““I don’t care about my things””, Donna said. ““I only care about Shadow””.