Dog helps save owner during stroke

LA PUENTE, Calif. (KABC) -- Every day, 74-year-old Freddy Parrales spends hours in his garage cultivating his award-winning cactus and succulents. But one day as he was repotting a plant, something went terribly wrong.

"I dropped to the ground with no signs of anything," he said.

Freddy was having a massive stroke. His left side wouldn't move, his speech was slurred and one side of his face was drooping.

"I was awake, I tried to get up myself. My body was so loose. I'd get up and boom, I'd drop again," he said.

His wife, Juana, was eating breakfast in the kitchen. Freddy could have remained alone for hours on the garage floor. But his little Shih Tzu mix Bella knew something was wrong. She alerted Juana.

"She was still, you know, scratching the door, and then I get up and open the door, and then she goes out, runs out to the garage, and then I said, I better go and see her," said Juana.

That's when she discovered her husband down on the ground.

"She would have just stayed there, you know, go on with her daily chores, and wouldn't know," said Freddy.

Bella's ability to get Freddy help within minutes of his stroke saved him. Studies show if you can get stroke patients to the hospital immediately after the onset of symptoms, doctors can administer the clot-busting TPA drug within what experts call the "golden hour."

"There's a door-to-needle time and that's the goal is 60 minutes or less," said Dr. James Baker at Kaiser Permanente in Baldwin Park

Freddy received the clot buster 40 minutes after getting to the emergency room.

"He is a classic case of full recovery. The TPA worked in his case. It dissolved the clot that was in one of the blood vessels in his brain, and he had a full recovery," said Baker.

This holiday season, Freddy and Juana have a lot to be thankful for, and Bella will have a special place at the table.

"We're going to put a special seat in there at the table, and she is going to be the first one in the table," said Juana.