"As a nurse, I knew he was probably dead, but the firefighters wouldn't give up," said the dog's owner, Crystal Lamirande.
A lucky pup is breathing again thanks to a California firefighter who performed mouth-to-snout resuscitation for 20 minutes after pulling his motionless body from a blaze.
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“There wasn’t time to think, just react,” said Santa Monica Fire Department’s Andrew Klein, who performed lifesaving CPR on the dog. “Being a dog lover and owner myself, it was a proud moment.”
Crystal Lamirande, 35, told InsideEdition.com she realized Nalu, her 10-year-old Bichon Frise Shih Tzu mix was in trouble when her neighbors shouted her apartment was on fire.
“The smoke was so thick, like it was a huge black cloud you couldn’t even see,” Lamirande said. “I was in shock, panicked.”
Firefighters arrived moments later, and pulled her dog out of the blaze.
“As a nurse, I knew he was probably dead,” she said, “but the firefighters wouldn’t give up. Andrew [the firefighter] was so calm and he said, ‘We have a pulse, don’t worry, we have a pulse, we’re going to get him back.’”
Twenty minutes later, Nalu came back to life.
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“Failure wasn’t an option,” Klein told InsideEdition.com. “This was my first official pet save with CPR.”
The pup was treated in an oxygen chamber for the next 24 hours, but Lamirande said, other than a bit of a cough, Nalu is expected to make a full recovery.
Lamirande said officials are still investigating the source of the fire.
