Shelter Dogs by Peg Kehret Page A

her attention, he didn’t bark; instead, he went to her and nudged her.
    A year after they adopted Ivan, Taj and her husband rented a new townhome. Alexandra got her own bedroom, and there was more room for Ivan, who was now fully grown. By then the Brumleves had learned that Alexandra was hearing-impaired like her mother, so Ivan’s training and duties became even more important. He now had two deaf people to watch out for.
    One afternoon Taj put three-year-old Alexandra in her bed for a nap. Then Taj went downstairs, with Ivan at her side. She stretched out on the couch in the living room and fell asleep. Ivan, as always, lay on the floor next to her.
    Taj was sleeping soundly when she felt something heavy on her chest. Still half-asleep, she realized it was Ivan. Ivan weighed sixty pounds, so she definitely did not want him sitting on her.
    He licked her face and pawed at her arm.
    â€œIvan, get down,” she said sleepily, pushing the dog to the floor. It took her a few minutes to wake up fully, but when she did, she realized that Ivan would never jump on her unless something was wrong.
    She opened her eyes. Ivan was no longer beside her.
    The room looked foggy, and she now smelled smoke. Fear jolted through Taj.
    Fire!
    She leaped off the couch.
    Knowing Alexandra would not hear her call, Taj raced for the stairs. The thick smoke made her cough. Her eyes smarted, and her heart pounded with fear for her little girl.
    When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she met Ivan—with Alexandra at his side! Ivan had Alexandra’s shirt sleeve in his mouth. He was tugging the sleepy child forward toward the front door!
    As soon as he knew Taj was awake, Ivan had gone upstairs to awaken Alexandra and lead her to safety.
    Knowing that her daughter was safe, Taj quickly searched for the cause of the smoke, thinking she might be able to put the fire out. Nothing was burning in the kitchen. She hurried back to the stairway and looked up. Smoke billowed from around the sides of Alexandra’s bedroom door.
    Taj now knows that she should have taken Alexandra and Ivan outside immediately and stayed out herself. But that day she was only thinking of trying to put out the fire. She left Alexandra and Ivan downstairs and rushed up to Alexandra’s room. She put her hands on the door and then jerked them back. The door was too hot to open.
    She peered through the keyhole and saw nothing but blackness. Alexandra’s bedroom was so full of smoke that Taj could not even see the outline of the bed.
    â€œIt was like looking into space,” Taj says.
    She raced back down the stairs. By then the house was so full of smoke she could barely breathe. Taj grabbed Alexandra’s hand and scooped up the terrified Orca. With Ivan following, they ran to their neighbor’s home.
    â€œFire!” Taj screamed as she pounded on the neighbor’s door.
    The neighbor called 911. She kept Alexandra, Ivan, and Orca inside. Taj called her husband, Michael, at work and he rushed home.
    Taj couldn’t hear the wail of the approaching sirens, but she saw the fire trucks roar up the street. She watched as the firefighters aimed their hoses at her home.
    Horrified, she saw the firefighters pull a burning mattress out of the house. Alexandra had been napping on that mattress. Taj knew that sleeping people are sometimes overcome by smoke inhalation; they never wake up to flee from the fire.
    Tears streamed down her face as she thought what would have happened to Alexandra if Ivan had not smelled the smoke and jumped on Taj to wake her up. What if he had not gone up the stairs and entered that smoke-filled bedroom? What if he had not taken the little girl’s sleeve in his mouth and tugged until she followed him down the stairs?
    â€œAnother fifteen minutes,” Taj says, “and Alexandra and I almost certainly would have been overcome by smoke. We probably wouldn’t have made it.”
    Thanks to Ivan, the