I should've listened to my dog long before the Fire Department arrived
Why I'll never be a fan of electric baseboard heaters again
This is an excerpt from the “Homegrown Tales” post “Electric baseboard heater on fire, speedy lesson in how to use a fire extinguisher ~ Once again, I learned why I should always listen to my dog.” Click here to subscribe.
I have learned several lessons the hard way by not listening to my dog. As a matter of fact, all three dogs taught me something new. For whatever reason, I keep thinking humans are smarter and ignore the lesson until later. This time around, I turned on that bedroom electric baseboard heater at midnight and my dog froze. There was nothing wrong with it, from what my eyes could see. But my dog started pacing back and forth. She marched to the bedroom door and then walked into the living room. Then she’d poke her head in at me. She did this several times. I thought she just had to pee, so I took her outside.
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But she kept doing it. She’d pace, walk out of the bedroom and then go to the living room, and come back. She’d sniff the air and pace some more. While I was snuggled on my bed and trying to read a book, I was growing irritated by the constant tap-tap-tapping. Every time she went from room to room, she would keep opening the bedroom door wider. And I wanted all that comfy heat to stay inside. Finally, I got so tired of her pacing, suspiciously sniffing and staring at the heater, and I ordered her out of my bedroom and to her second crate in my living room. She huffed, but she walked in it and sat down.
I closed the bedroom door. Shortly after, I turned the lights out around 2 a.m.-ish, got under the covers and was all set to have a cozy, warm sleep. It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes from the time I put my Hound mix in the living room crate before I heard a strange popping sound — like popcorn in a microwave. Even without my contact lenses in and my glasses on a nearby nightstand, I could see this orange-yellow flicker. I leaped up, realizing that electric baseboard heater was on fire. Beelining past my dog, who was in her crate on full alert, I grabbed a fire extinguisher from my kitchen and dampened a rag.
Shamontiel is a dog lover to her core: 510 completed walks with 89 dogs, eight dog-housesittings and six dog boardings at the time of this publication.
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