When Debbie Parkhurst choked on a piece of apple at her Maryland home her dog jumped in landing hard on her chest and forcing the piece of apple to pop out of her throat. Debbie Parkhurst’s husband Kevin was at his job at a Wilmington Del. chemical firm when she took a midday break from jewelry and bit into an apple. When the Keesling family of Indiana were about to be overcome by carbon monoxide(CO) their cat clawed(抓) at wife Cathy’s hair until she woke up and called for help.
　　For their timely acts Toby a golden 2 1/2-year-old dog and Winnie a gray-eyed American shorthair were named Dog and Cat of the Year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Neither Parkhurst nor Keesling could explain their pets’ timely heroics though Parkhurst suggested it might have been guided by God intervention(干预). “That’s what our veterinarian(兽医) said ”she said. “He wasn’t making a joke; he’s very spiritual and now I have to agree with him.” 
But both pets were themselves rescued in baby Toby as a 4-week-old baby thrown into a garbage bin to die and Winnie as a week-old orphan hiding under a barn so helpless that Keesling’s husband Eric had to feed her milk.
As the Keeslings recalled it a gas-driven pump spread carbon monoxide through the house. By the time Winnie moved into rescue spot the couple’s 14-year-old son Michael was already unconscious. “Winnie jumped on the bed and was clawing at me with a kind of angry noise ” Cathy Keesling said. “When I woke up I felt like a T-bar had hit me across the head.”
State police and officers responding to her 911 call said the family was only minutes from death judging by the amount of poisonous gas in the house