Thanks to a heroic dog named Polo, a little girl named Vivianna is still alive and breathing after being rescued from a house fire.

A Baltimore, Maryland home suddenly caught fire one evening a couple of years ago. Inside was trapped an 8-month-old baby girl, Vivianna. Thankfully, though, she wasn’t all alone. She had her devoted dog, Polo, in the house with her.

Erika Poremski, Vivianna’s mom, had stepped outside for a short moment. When she turned around, though, she was met with the terrifying sight of her home being swallowed up in flames. Stricken with panic, she and every onlooker in her neighborhood were doing their best to beat down the doors to rescue Erika’s babies.

“I just heard her crying and I couldn’t get to her. I tried really hard, everyone in the neighborhood tried. They were kicking the doors in and kicking the windows out. I couldn’t (get her out). Nobody could,” she cries in an interview with WBAL TV.

By the time the Baltimore City Fire Department got to the scene, the entire two-story apartment was already burning in a raging fire.

On arriving, Poremski rushed to firefighters to inform them her baby girl and her small dog were still trapped inside of the burning building. Immediately, they raced into the home to try and rescue them, without thought for themselves or their own well-being. What they saw left them with mixed emotions of both relief and utter heartbreak.

The firefighters burst through the doors to find the dog lying on top of the baby’s body and, thank God, Vivianna was alive.

Sadly, Polo was not. The 6-year-old dog had thrown himself on top of Vivianna, using his own body to shield her from the encroaching flames. Polo had done the most honorable thing anyone can do. He sacrificed his own life so that he might save baby Vivianna’s.

Although Vivianna didn’t come out completely unscathed, suffering burns along one side of her body, there is no question that had it not been for Polo, she likely would have died in the fire.

“She only had burns on her side because of it. He stayed with her the whole time in the bedroom and wouldn’t even come downstairs to get out the door. He was my first baby and now I lost him. And I’m just praying I don’t lose her. She’s all I have and it just happened so fast, I just don’t understand it…I just don’t know why this stuff happens,” says Poremski as she struggles through her tears.

Baby Vivianna was rushed to the hospital and put under a medically induced coma to treat the burns on her little body.

Poremski is grateful that with each passing day, her daughter gets just a little bit better. While she couldn’t be more relieved or thankful to have her baby alive, she is still heartbroken over the loss of her furbaby. The only comfort in Polo’s death is knowing that he was happy to do anything to save his tiny human. Even if it met giving up his own life to do so.

Vivianna and her mom both have a lot of healing to do. We are glad, though, that thanks to Polo, they can do it together. To learn more about this touching story, watch the video below.

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Source: Animal Channel