Now here's a dog who looks proud of herself! As well she should. Sixty-eight-year-old Franklin, Ohio resident George Byrd's eight-month-old chihuahua Jinx awakened him at one-thirty in the night of May 6, 2009, tearing up a storm on the bed to get him roused.

"I had never seen her do that," said Byrd. "I'm hard of hearing with my hearing aids out, and to wake me up took a lot of noise."

Slowly he realized the apartment-house was on fire. He raced upstairs to wake his four neighbors, two of whom were teenagers. "Without her, my little partner," said Byrd, "we might have been in trouble around here. She is my hero." [Photo by Nick Graham]