PSA: are you dog proof? and... never put ANYTHING on your stove....

[blairasb]

I was at my friend’s house for training club with my two dogs last night. we had a few small dogs loose in the house while we were out on the field training. Wrapped up and headed inside. Opened the front door, and we were greeted by thick black smoke. we flew in and got to the kitchen and her stove was on fire.

While we were training, one of her regular boarders came to drop their dog off… friend told customer to stick dog in x kennel and put kibble in the kitchen. Well, customer did as instructed but sat the bag of kibble up on the stove since my friend had paperwork out on her.

Thankfully we were able to put out the fire with a few buckets of water and started evacuating dogs (friend boards and trains dogs out of her house. finding secure locations for 15 dogs, plus finding her cats and corralling them in the basement amid chaos. I had a really scary half an hour where I couldn’t find my puppy. I thought she’d squeezed out the door maybe when we came in because we couldnt see anything. I found her, thankfully, in the bathroom. she had buried herself in the dirty clothes hamper. Absolutely terrified… thankfully none the worse for wear… Stove is going to have to be replaced and there’s damage to the wall. luckily we got in time before it spread to anything on the counter or up to her cabinets.

what happened?

Well… she has an old gas stove with the nobs down on the front. And apparently one of the little minions tried very hard to get to that bag of crappy ol kibble… and bumped the knob and turned on a burner.

we also discovered the complete inadequacy of the locations that her fire detectors were installed in her house…

We were VERY VERY lucky- she could have lost a lot of dogs, all her property, and her home.

Lessons to be learned:
Dogs CAN paw knobs located on the front of the stove and turn them on. Childproof. Or… buy a stove that has the knobs along the back up above the burners.

NEVER put anything flammable on top of your stove unless you are cooking it. I am guilty of this on a regular basis. I won’t ever be again, that is for sure.

and…make sure your smoke detectors are functioning and in places that will alert you to trouble!

[SGray]

good reminder

[ellevt]

This exact thing happened to a friend of mine. Burned down an entire apartment building. No people were hurt but she lost a cat.

[Bells]

whoa scary! Thanks for the reminder.

[xQHDQ]

My parents were watching our puppy for the first time and she jumped on the stove and turned on the gas for one of the burners. Thankfully, my mother was in the kitchen and heard a hissing noise. That could have been bad.

[Houndhill]

I recently came into the kitchen to find my wolfhound riveted to the digital display scrolling across the side of my oven…she had pressed the “help” button on the display, which resulted in the scrolling, which she found entertaining. Fortunately, she has not repeated it. I suppose she could turn the oven to “bake” if she wanted, who knew?

I echo the “be aware of what functions your dog can turn on in the kitchen” message!

My stovetop has a button that shuts it all off, unless you hold down this button (so you can clean it without turning on the burners) . But, clearly my dogs can turn on my oven if they want to. Also, they could turn on the faucet in the kitchen sink if they wanted, they are tall enough, and sometimes like to drink out of the kitchen faucet when it is running, but that wouldn’t do much harm.

It is of some comfort that they can do these things, if there were an emergency where they had to (with the water, doubt that the oven thing would be useful to them). They can also all open doors by the knob if they want to, but they don’t unless they really feel the need, so you don’t realize they can, until they do.