Kaizer is a hero. The four-and-a-half-year old dog, a Japanese spitz saw his human in medical distress in his Dubai home and was the first to jump to the rescue.
On the night of August 25, Saeed Al Bayati, a 33-year-old Dubai resident, was on the third floor of his house in Palm Jumeirah that he shares with three friends.
When he walked to the door to go downstairs, he twisted his ankle and fell on to the floor.
Al Bayati, who has a history of asthma, panicked. He started sweating and rapidly fell out of breath. The business development manager in a Dubai-based company started calling out for help.
It was past 10pm, one of his housemates was asleep in her room on the second floor, while another friend was watching television on the ground floor.
The domestic help, too, was asleep. With no one responding, he started shouting out names of everyone in the house, including Kaizer’s.
Kaizer was the only one to respond
Kaizer, reached upstairs in jiffy. But, the door was closed. “I could hear him sniffing under the door. I am sure he picked up that I was in distress and immediately started barking.”
Barking incessantly, he went repeatedly to each member of the house till someone paid attention and took action. Priya Shah, one of the housemates, said: “Kaizer tried to come to each of us. He kept on barking for over 15 minutes and made sure one of us checked. They followed him upstairs.”
It was finally Al Bayati’s friend Rhys who was on the ground floor who understood that Kaizer was trying to say something.
He followed the dog upstairs and helped Al Bayati come down.
In the meantime, Priya and the domestic helper woke up. An ambulance was called and Al Bayati was rushed to the hospital.”
Kaizer became an online hero
Priya took to Dubai-based-dog-lovers’ Facebook group to post about Kaizer’s heroism.
The British-Indian national, posted a picture of Al Bayati and Kaizer on the closed group Dogs in Dubai and the spitz quickly became popular.
“This is a wonderful story, well done Kaizer,” posted one user. And, another wrote: “Animals instincts are truly amazing and in this case life saving. A very heartwarming story to read. Wishing your friend a speedy recovery.”
A pet clinic in Dubai even offered him a free grooming session. “I took them up on the offer and Kaizer was treated like the hero he is,” added Priya.
'Friendly but protective'
“We bought him from a store in Jumeirah Lake Towers when he was only a couple of weeks. Normally, he sleeps next to me. He’s my baby, goes with me everywhere,” said Priya.
He’s a friendly dog but very protective of everyone in the house. He even barks at parents if he thinks they are scolding me, when they visit me in Dubai and stay with us.
Dogs save lives
It is not uncommon for dog owners to say that their pet saved their lives.
In January, Gulf News published a report about how a stray dog saved the life of an Indian doctor who saved her and took care of her. The dog alerted a neighbour right after the 65-year-old general physician had suffered a paralytic attack and a minor cardiac arrest.
This year in July, a US news website kutv.com published a similar story about a North Salt Lake woman Stacie King who suffers from epilepsy and Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome - a rare pain disorder, which means she is constantly in pain. The story reports about how her rescue dog, saved her life more than once.
Dogs detect humans in distress
Research has shown that when humans cry, their dogs also feel distress.
In a July 2018 research paper titled “Timmy’s in the well: Empathy and prosocial helping in dogs,” researchers showed that dogs with strong bonds to their owners hurried to push through a door when they heard their person crying.
The new study published in the journal Learning and Behavior found that dogs not only feel distress when they see that their owners are sad but will also try to do something to help.
In a 2012 study published online in the journal Animal Cognition, University of London researchers found that dogs were more likely to approach a crying person than someone who was humming or talking, and that they normally responded to weeping with submissive behaviours.
Study researcher and psychologist Deborah Custance said in a statement: “The fact that the dogs differentiated between crying and humming indicates that their response to crying was not purely driven by curiosity. Rather, the crying carried greater emotional meaning for the dogs and provoked a stronger overall response...”
A dog is truly a man’s best friend. If you would like to adopt a furever friend, take a look at these pawsome puppies looking for a home, in our Save an Animal section.
