A 9-year-old heroic dog who tried to save her owner from a fatal house fire in the US state of Ohio is now fighting for her own life.
Carmen, a boxer had refused to leave her owner when deadly flames licked all around her in a suburban Cincinnati basement last Thursday.
First responders on the scene found Carmen on top of Ben Ledford, trying to shelter his face from the heat, smoke and flame, CNN reported today.
Ledford, 33, was taken to a hospital where he later died.
Carmen ended up at Cincinnati's Care Center, a critical care veterinary hospital, where the vets there have placed her on a ventilator.
"She's doing OK. Considering what Carmen has been through we think she's doing as well as can be expected," Dr Daniel Carey, a vet at the hospital, said.
Carey said Carmen is battling severe lung damage and is not strong enough to breathe on her own yet.
Despite her breathing problems, Carmen has shown improvement in other areas. She is mentally alert and showing no signs of neurological problems, the vet said.
"She's resting. She's very heavily sedated so that she won't fight -- you know, that she's got a tube down her trachea or windpipe. She seems very comfortable."
Ledford's family and friends, while mourning the loss of his life, are still doing what they can to help Carmen save hers.
They have turned to crowdsourcing website CrowdRise to raise funds to help pay Carmen's hospital bills.
The hospital is also providing updates on Carmen through social media, using Facebook to post pictures of the dog resting on a pink blanket and keeping company with a pair of stuffed animals.
Dr Marlo Anderson, another vet at the hospital who is caring for the dog, said she was not at all surprised that Carmen tried to save her owner.
"A lot of dogs instinctively know when there's a crisis going on and so a lot of them do go to try to protect their owners, so she very well may have been trying to protect him," she said.
