Dog saves baby’s life and gets top rating

Dogs can be more than just fourlegged companions. Sometimes, they can be heroes. Just ask one Connecticut mom.

On Wednesday, Glastonbury resident and author Kelly Dowling’s story was featured on the social media account WeRateDogs, which assigns user-submitted dog photos a funny (or punny) caption and a rating often higher than 10/10. The post detailed Dowling's experience with Henry, her family’s Boston terrier, who kept finding his way into her infant daughter’s room and waking her up, Dowling described in an Instagram post re-posted by WeRateDogs.

“She’s sick, and I was getting so fed up with him,” she wrote.

That is, until Henry’s persistence saved her daughter’s life and alerted Dowling that her baby had stopped breathing.

“We spent the night in the hospital. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t woken her,” she wrote. “We don’t deserve dogs.”

The WeRateDogs Instagram post shared Dowling’s story with a caption calling Henry, “officially big brother of the year,” and assigned him the accounts 21st and highlycoveted good dog rating of 15/10. Commenters on the social media platform noted the dog’s “life-saving stubbornness,” with one even calling Henry the “hero of the year.”

On Twitter, Dowling’s original tweet sharing her story has racked up more than 240,000 likes and nearly 25,000 retweets. Dowling later updated her thread by sharing that her daughter is feeling much better and thanking those sending well wishes to her family.

As for Henry, she said while tending to her daughter at the hospital, he “bravely held down the fort all night even though he is scared of the dark.”

Dowling was not available to provide comment for this story.