Jeffrey Souder credits his dogs with saving him and his 15-year-old son from an early morning house fire Sunday.
“They were going nuts, pulling on my pants and my son’s shirt,” Souder said of his two 1-year-old huskie-bulldog mixes. “They ripped my pants and my son’s shirt trying to get us up.”
He said his wife, Christina, was having a girls’ night out with their three daughters, ages 14, 10 and 9. An older daughter and two older sons are in Arizona.
Once the dogs had Souder and his son up, Souder said he heard noise coming from the second floor of his Victorian home at 207 W. Tiffin St.
“I thought maybe there was an intruder up there,” he said, explaining he went upstairs to investigate. “There’s a glass door at the top of the stairs and I couldn’t see through the glass. I put my hand on the door knob and it wasn’t hot.”
He said he opened the door and was knocked back by smoke.
“It sucked the oxygen out of my lungs and I could see flames rolling up the wall. It knocked me back a little bit.”