Kobe, a 4 year old husky, alerted his owner to a dangerous gas leak by repeatedly digging a large hole in their Philadelphia yard - as inside the house, owner Chanell Bell was plagued by ongoing issues with her gas heater.
"I trust his judgment because that isn’t his typical behaviour and he is usually right," she said. "He has great senses and he never digs holes unless he is helping me dig... so I knew something was up." Ms Bell had a gas leak in the house earlier in December, so she decided to take out her gas detection device. But tests inside the house turned up nothing, she said. "[Kobe's] hole looked ominous. It was very big and you could see that it showed under the sidewalk... When saw the hole and realized it was odd behavior for my dog, my intuition told me to check it." Immediately, the reading detected gas. She alerted the authorities, who informed her that if Kobe hadn't detected the leak when he did on 21 December, the consequences could have been catastrophic.