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Elaine Buote and her two Yorkshire terriers, Libby and Petunia, were inside their Dracut, Massachusetts home in the middle of the night on Friday, when flames quickly engulfed the home.
Elaine grabbed Petunia and, when she couldn’t find Libby, had no choice but to run outside to escape the fire.
Twenty-year old Michael Patenaude had just left a friend’s house nearby when he saw the flames. He immediately called the fire department, then stopped to ask Elaine if anyone was still inside the home.
When Elaine told him that her Yorkie, Libby, was still inside, the courageous young man handed her his cell phone and told her to continue talking to the fire department, to tell them what’s going on while he went inside to find Libby.
“It was just black smoke and flames flying right above my head. I’m looking for the dog. It was insane,” he told WBZ-TV.
He found Libby and carried her outside to safety.
“I consider my dogs like family and if there was a chance that my dogs could get out of my house, a situation like that was happening, I hope somebody would do it for me too,” Patenaude said.
Following the heroic rescue, Patenaude says he might look into becoming a firefighter. He explained that, obviously what he did wasn’t safe, but it felt like the right thing to do.
Investigators say the blaze was the result of an electrical fire.
