Some people call dogs “man’s best friend.” and last week, Izzie, the Yorkshire Terrier, saved her family from possibly dying in a house fire.

Izzie is the family pet of Keith and Kelli Gilchrist and their 10-year-old son Aaron. They live on Blair Farm Road in Odenville. When Izzie started barking continuously around 1 a.m. Feb. 19, they knew something was wrong.

“She started barking and that’s what woke my mom up,” said Aaron.

Keith said the fire started from a light bulb in a doghouse under the back porch.

The fire reached the screened-in back deck and was growing when it blew out a window.

“About that time is when their fire alarm went off,” said Jack Gilchrist, who lives next door to his son, daughter-in-law and grandson. “They came out the front door and Aaron ran over to wake us up.”

“My bedroom is upstairs and I was already headed downstairs,” Aaron said. “I figured it was probably just as quick to run out the front door than come all the way downstairs.

“When I ran outside, my mom was outside calling 911 and my dad was getting the vehicles out of the garage.”

Frank said when he got outside and saw the fire, he first thought the fire department could get there and save the house.

“It was contained on the outside and none of the roof was on fire,” Jack said. “But the house went quick.

“The fire department did a great job when they got here. They fought it hard but it had such a start before any of the fire alarms went off.”

“The whole back porch was in flames when we woke up,” said Keith Gilchrist. “There were no smoke or fire detectors out there.”

Jack said he would like to think all three would have got out of the burning house without the help of the dog.

“But Izzie gave them a head start,” Jack said.

They have one other family dog, Jake, a black lab.

Responding to the fire was the Odenville Fire Department, Moody Fire Department and Margaret Fire Department.

OFD’s Thomas Graves said they were paged out to the fire at 12:51 a.m.

“It was a total 100 percent loss,” Graves said. “We received mutual aid from Moody and Margaret and had a total of 15 firefighters on the scene from the three departments.”