Dog saves owner, but dies trying to rescue cat

updated 12:53 p.m. ET Oct. 18, 2006

ELKHART LAKE, Wis. - After a disabled woman’s cat started a house fire, her specially trained dog came to the rescue, then died trying unsuccessfully to rescue the cat.

Jamie Hanson said her 13-year-old dog Jesse brought her artificial leg and a phone she used to call 911.

“She got me outside and then she heard the cat upstairs and she went up there to get the cat and she wouldn’t come back to me,” Hanson, 49, said at a news conference Monday at Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center, where she was being treated for her injuries.

She received third-degree arm burns in the fire Sunday night at her home in Rhine, south of Elkhart Lake. Both pets died.

Hanson, who lost a leg in a car accident three years ago, said she was on the couch watching television when the cat ran over the back of the couch.

“And he jumped onto a table that had a candle on it and tipped it over and lighted the artificial plants on fire,” she said.

Hanson said she fell off the couch and was unable to get her artificial leg from the table, “so my dog got my leg for me and went and got the phone and brought the phone to me so I could call 911.”

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