Chanell Bell and her 4-year-old husky, Kobe, lived a comfortable life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kobe had a small yard in front of her house where he could play, but she could never have imagined him saving the neighborhood from a gas leak.
Chanell couldn’t understand at first why the husky was digging holes in the lawn. But as she thought about it, she realized that he was probably trying to tell her something.
The bigger the hole got, the more Chanell was determined to find out what point her husky was trying to get across. He had never acted like this before.
Digging Holes
He’d almost never dug holes before this incident, so it was likely something was wrong. She explained to SWNS that Kobe has great insight, and she trusts his instincts.
So Kobe wasn’t just having a bit of fun. He was trying to alert Chanell of something. She’d only ever gotten him to dig for her garden when they gardened together.
After thinking about what the pup could be trying to tell her, a thought occurred to Chanell. She had a device that for gas leaks.
A Gas Leak Reader
Luckily for Chanell, she had fixed a gas leak in December before Kobe’s strange behavior. This meant that she still had the device for measuring gas levels. Chanell grabbed the reader from her house and headed out to her garden. She was going to check the huge hole that Kobe had dug and find out what was going on.
Chanell explained, “I had a reader already in the house to make sure there were no leaks coming from my old heater. When I saw the hole, I realized it was odd behavior for my dog. My intuition told me to check it.”
Chanell put the reader near the hole, and it immediately told her that there was a gas leak coming from the hole. She had no idea how long it had been leaking for, and how many homes were affected.
Preventing A Disaster
She grabbed her phone and decided to call the authorities. She explained what was going on and they told her they’d send a gas foreman to assess the situation. Soon after ending the phone call, the gas foreman and his team arrived to check the leak. They started digging, hoping to see the true extent of what was going on.
After finding the cause of the leak, the foreman told Chanell that if Kobe hadn’t dug the hole and alerted her of the leak, it could have created a disaster. If enough gas had leaked into homes, people could have gotten really sick, including respiratory problems, brain damage, and death. They told her that even someone flicking on a light switch could have ignited the gas, causing an explosion. The crew quickly turned off the gas and started their repairs.
A Hero Dog
The more the crew got to repairing the leak, the more damage they realized there was. It wasn’t just a leak in front of Chanell’s home. They found three spots where there were major gas leaks.
They deduced that the problems were from how old the worn pipes were. It took approximately three days, but the crew managed to fix the leaks by taking out the old pipes and installing brand-new ones that would be much stronger.
The crew praised Kobe for being the one to figure out what was going on. He alerted his owner and averted a potential disaster just waiting to happen. Bell said, “They were so impressed with Kobe and mentioned what a good dog he was. It feels amazing to know Kobe saved our block; I am very thankful to have him.”
