Meet the Incredible Dogs Who Have Saved Lives

From the dog that detected a deadly hair treatment to the search and rescue hero from the Turkish earthquake, meet the pups who gave humans a second chance at life

by Lauren Crosby Medlicott

22 August 2024

Way back in 1908, the New York Times published a story out of Paris of a “splendid Newfoundland” who rescued children that had fallen in the Seine and was rewarded with “succulent beefsteak”.

“Some time ago, a child playing on the riverbank fell into the water and was in imminent danger of being drowned,” the article said. “The dog, hearing the cries and the splashing, leaped over a hedge, ran down the bank, and plunged into the stream just in time to rescue the little victim.”

The father of the child, overwhelmed with gratitude, presented the dog with a treat of beef.

Two days later, another child fell in the water and was rescued by the same dog, and once again rewarded with meat.

More and more children kept ‘falling’ into the river to be rescued by the dog until eventually, it was discovered that the dog was knocking children into the water in order to save them so it could be heftily rewarded.

“He had thus established for himself a profitable source of revenue,” the article concluded.

While the 1908 dog was deemed a fake hero, there are dogs who really do save the lives of humans. Here, we take a look at some of the world‘s actual hero dogs.

Rocky

Sue Calver woke up on a gurney in a hospital corridor with her husband standing next to her, unable to make out what had happened to her.

“The last thing I remembered was walking our dog, Rocky, and being just moments from home,” she said in article she wrote recounting the experience.

But that was all she could recall.

Turns out, she’d been hit by a delivery van. But without her ID on her, how had her husband known about her accident?

Rocky. He was howling outside of the family’s front door, alerting Sue’s husband that something was wrong. Her husband took up the lead and Rocky led him to where Sue was lying in the middle of the road.

“Apparently, I flew more than 10 metres through the air after being hit by the ASDA van,” she said. “Witnesses called an ambulance, others stopped to help and the driver did pull over. And that’s when Rocky ran to Paul.”

After six nights in hospital recovering, Sue arrived home to find her hero.

Billy

When Stacey Jenvey was walking her Staffordshire Bull Terrier Billy in Bournemouth in May 2024, a masked man jumped out of a bush and demanded she hand over her pet. When she refused, the man pulled out a knife.

Within seconds, Billy “went mental”.

But Stacey said that before the threatening surprise, Billy had been “acting really weird”, as if he was trying to warn her something wasn’t right.

Once the man was scared away by Billy, Stacey ran to a local shop and phoned the police.

“He saved my life,” Stacey said to The Guardian newspaper, speaking of her protective dog.

Vesper

In 2020, Niamh, a dog handler from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Services, took Vesper, a female Belgian Malinois in when the pup was only 18 months old.

Not long after, Vesper and Niamh travelled the world together saving lives as part of the UK International Search and Rescue Team.

Vesper worked to save lives in the horrific Turkey and Morocco earthquakes, working with a team to locate survivors amid the vast amount of rubble.

“Vesper is a vital asset to our searching capabilities in disastrous conditions,” Niamh said. “She has mastered the skill to quickly eliminate a variety of smells such as food, decomposition and wildlife so that we can rely on her to efficiently search for signs of life. She will go through disasters and identify unique aspects of live, breathing casualties.”

Vesper was awarded the The Kennel Club Hero Dog Award at Crufts 2024.

Louie

Karen Ethier from Gloucestershire had no inkling that she had cancer when her dog Loui kept headbutting and nuzzling into her chest.

“I couldn’t believe it when I found a lump – Louie was trying to warn me the whole time,” Karen said.

It turned out Karen had aggressive breast cancer, and underwent intense chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.

“Louie is incredibly loyal and he knew when I was feeling down or sick from treatment,” she said.

Chico

When 13-year-old Chico, a Yorkshire terrier, kept sniffing at the head of Levi Carter, refusing to leave her alone after a hair appointment, Levi knew something must be wrong.

Earlier in the day, Levi had visited a hair salon to go from brown to blonde hair, but after the peroxide bleach was applied, Levi said her scalp was smoking before the stylist quickly washed it off.

She went to the hospital and was treated with third-degree burns. When she arrived home from the hospital though, Chico still wouldn’t leave her alone, sniffing the wounds on her head. She returned to the hospital once again.

“I only went back into the hospital because my dog wouldn't leave me alone – he must have smelt the infection,” Levi said. “If I left it any longer then who knows what would have happened – I might not be here. Chico saved my life.”

Moose

Leeanne Reed had been training her nine-month-old Labrador Moose to detect when she was about to have a seizure and then work to save her. Having a complex neurological disorder, Leeanne suffers with dozens of mini seizures each day, but they usually only last a few seconds.

“This time it was a big one,” she said. “It lasted about two or three minutes and I wasn’t breathing for all that time.”

When she came around, she was blue with lack of oxygen.

“All I could see was Moose’s big doofy face on top of mine,” she said. “He was licking my nose, my mouth and even the inside of my mouth – which is exactly what he’s trained to do to get me breathing. He saved my life – there is no doubt.”

Kilian

Following the recent earthquakes in Turkey, 6-year-old Kilian from Bulgaria spent five days locating people trapped in fallen buildings.

“Kilian would search a larger area than us in record time, and the result would be much more accurate than ours,” said George Vlaykov, the team leader of the mission. “The dog was like a self-sufficient searching unit, and it was very valuable to us. When the local people saw Kilian, they would applaud because they knew that the dog could find people that we didn't find. And the dog only would bark when it found alive people, not dead people. And it would bark five times, not four, not six. Exactly five times. So we would wait for that sound.”

Elvis

Seven-year-old Eli Wilson was walking home from school with his dog Elvis when Eli suddenly started running towards the middle of a road.

Eli had been diagnosed with autism at the age of three and his family had gotten him a support dog who was trained to brace in incidents such as this when Eli ran off.

"That’s the thing with Eli – he can be okay one minute and then he’s not,” his mum said. “There was something he didn’t like on the way home from school and his instinct was to run away.”

Elvis, who was strapped to Eli, halted, keeping Eli from stepping onto the road in front of a oncoming vehicle.

““Had we not had Elvis, it would have been a very different outcome,” his mum said. “There were certainly a few tears.”

Lauren Crosby Medlicott

Lauren is a freelance journalist who lives with her family and black labrador, Betsie, in the south Wales valleys. When she's not working, she loves going for a dip in a nearby river and hiking in the Brecon Beacons.