Woman wakes up to dog barking – and realizes something is happening to her husband

In the small village of Ballinamallard in Northern Ireland, a golden retriever named Polly helped save her owner’s life after he suffered a cardiac arrest during the night. For her heroic act, the four-year-old dog was awarded the title of ‘CPR Hero,’ as reported by the BBC. During the night, Hannah Cook was awakened by Polly’s barking. At that moment, she noticed that her husband, Adam, was breathing unusually, and soon his breathing stopped altogether. ‘At first, I thought he was choking, but then he stopped breathing,’ she recalls. Hannah immediately started performing chest compressions and rescue breaths. ‘I worked as a carer and was with people in their final moments, so I know what their breathing sounds like. Once you’ve heard it, you can’t mistake it,’ she says. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Adam seven times on the way to the hospital. The 37-year-old man woke up only six days later. Doctors diagnosed him with dilated cardiomyopathy and fitted him with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator to regulate his heart rhythm. Adam believes he owes his life to his wife and dog: ‘They are heroes. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.’ According to Hannah, Polly signaled just as the seizure was starting: ‘Polly gave me those crucial seconds.’ The British Heart Foundation awarded the retriever with a medal. Foundation representative Fergal MacKinney points out that there are 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK every year, with less than one in ten surviving: ‘With each passing minute, the chances of survival drop by 10%.’ Dog behaviorist Louise Glazebrook added that pets pick up on signals that are inaccessible to humans: ‘What Polly did in saving a life and altering its course forever is incredible.’