Life can be, well, life. It can be daunting, it can be difficult, it can be tasking, and it can be wonderful. And it can be all those things and more in a few small hours, or a single day.

This weekend was just that for me.

The day should have started like any other. Should’ve being the operative word here. Instead it started in a frenzy.

Lily, my 6 month old pup would not go to sleep for the world. Nothing was going to calm her down. She was to bite me, growl at me, jump on me. Basically do anything it took to make me get out of bed. Figuring she really needed to go outside I obliged her insistance. It was this that saved my son’s life.

My little pitty cross went running full force up the two flights of stairs to my youngest sons room where she barked, whined and made me follow.

Upon arrival to his bedroom, I found him in a full blown asthma attack, lips blue, struggling to breathe. It was a truly terrifying moment. Few moments in my life have ever made me so scared.

I grabbed him, grabbed my ventolin and gave him every last puff that little blue tube had to give till he began breathing normally again, and off we were to the hospital.

A quick in and out, new medications and all that stuff and we were home. Which is when it all really sunk in.

Had I not had my dogs, I would not have my son. And suddenly, everything that is going wrong in my life, everything that is driving me to the edge and back, doesn’t matter so much.

Come the end of Saturday, I had my baby boy still with me. I wasn’t planning his funeral or mourning his death, I was celebrating his life, and the life of his best friend. He calls her his hero dog. His favorite dog. He showers her with love and praise, knowing that it was her that saved his life. Had she not awoken me in the middle of the night, 3 hours later when I should’ve gotten up, things would have been very different. Very different indeed.

Life happens, shit happens. It just does. What matters though, in the end, in all reality, is simply those little things. The little things, that when it’s all boiled down become the big things. The things that matter.

Introducing Lily Meier, the pup who saved my little Matty’s life:

Matty's Hero