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words by Carol King A dog’s alert nose helped an apartment building in Livorno from blowing up – and a man from committing suicide. The incident has made national news in Italy. It took place in Via Settembrini, in the Rosa neighbourhood of the city of Livorno, a port on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany. According to �������� news site ‘QuiLivorno.it’, it took place during the night when most of the occupants of a block of flats were sleeping. However, a 16-month-old Golden Retriever called ‘Mia’ was awake. She smelled gas, alerted her family and so was able to save them all. Mia barked and barked in an attempt to attract the attention of her owner and his family. Her barks were so loud that she woke her sleeping owner. An intelligent dog, Mia then made her owner understand that he was in danger because the owner’s next-door neighbour in the apartment block, a 53-year-old man, had decided to take his life by leaving the gas-tap open in the kitchen and torching his apartment. The apartment building and its sleeping occupants would have gone up in flames if the canine heroine had not raised the alarm. Mia’s owner called the emergency services and fire fighters arrived to put out the blaze. The man who had left the gas open then tried to take his life by jumping off a balcony but emergency-services staff were able to stop him. His apartment was almost destroyed by the fire. Mia’s proud owner told the press: “Mia has never barked until [that] day. [That night] she started to bark and growl, and showed me to the landing, I saw smoke coming out from the neighbour’s door. I knocked on the door and I heard him answer: ‘I’m not interested in anything, I don't care about anything.’”