This Firefighter Rescued a Puppy From a Burning Home—and then Adopted Him

Pickens County, Georgia firefighter Isaac Holaway knows how to stay calm under pressure—so when his son alerted him that their new puppy, Lieutenant Pee Wee, just had an accident in their house, Holaway stayed even-keeled.

“It’s all good, buddy,” he said, laughing. “Daddy will clean it.” He continued our phone interview while walking Pee Wee.

Lieutenant Holaway first met Pee Wee under far more stressful circumstances, rescuing him from a burning home. But that tragic event brought a new member into Holaway’s family.

“We’ll go in and handle it.”

Holaway remembers the day in March when he met Pee Wee. He arrived at a fire, and his chief let him know that a mother dog and her puppies were still inside the house. “So I tell the chief, ‘Okay, we’ll go in and handle it,’” he says.

The puppies were very small, and would have been difficult to find in the smoke and fire—but because their mother wouldn’t leave them, Holaway had no problem doing so. Once he saw the mother, he was able to find her puppies by touch.

Holaway passed all seven puppies out the window, but the mother was too large for that—so he had to carry her out the front door. He tried to save her with CPR, but she had breathed in too much smoke. She passed away—but her last act saved her puppies’ life.

“The mom totally covered them,” says Jennifer Siegel, founder of Bosley’s Place, the organization that took care of Pee Wee after the fire. “They didn’t even smell like smoke.”

The mother’s name was Pee Wee, and the puppy that Holaway ended up adopting was originally named Pee Wee Junior in her honor. Once it became clear that he’d be joining Holaway’s family, he became a lieutenant like his new best friend.

“He’s already got a rank,” says Holaway, “and it’s pretty serious. He’s on the road to success right off the bat.”

“Do you wanna get one of the puppies?”

As Lieutenant Holaway told his wife about the rescue, she sensed that it meant a lot to him. “Hey,” she asked. “Do you want to get one of the puppies?”

Soon after that, Holaway started visiting the three fire-rescue puppies who were at Bosley’s Place—the others had gone to Pup and Cat Co., another organization. He immediately knew he wanted Pee Wee to be a part of his family. “It just felt right,” says Holaway. 

Holaway continued visiting Pee Wee on Sundays after church, watching him grow. He was even there on the day Pee Wee first opened his eyes. “He was holding [Pee Wee’s] face and [bottle] feeding him,” says Siegel, “and his eyes opened… you couldn’t have written a better script.”

Siegel kept Holaway posted as Pee Wee grew at Bosley’s Place and in a foster home. “I’d get messages almost on a daily basis,” he says, “with pictures and everything.” 

“They don’t know anything but trust, love, and respect.”

Puppies like Pee Wee, who are separated from their mothers at a young age, require extra care to grow into happy, healthy adult dogs.

Maddie Messina, applied animal behaviorist and founder of Paws for Thought Dog Training in New York City, who was not involved in training Pee Wee, says: “Puppies who lose their mother at an early age are at a disadvantage for many possible reasons, and thus socialization should be done with care.” She says that, in socializing such a puppy, she’d focus on spending the majority of the critical socialization period—which she says goes up until 14 weeks—“exposing the puppy in small doses to new sights, sounds, and feelings” while looking out for signs of discomfort and pairing new stimuli with positive reinforcement.

At Bosley’s Place, Pee Wee stayed with two of his littermates, and caring people handled and fed him. Siegel says that her dog, Bosley, “helps raise all of these puppies. He’s in there when I’m bottle feeding. He’s licking them and cleaning them, just like their mother would.” At four weeks, Bosley starts to have “play dates” with the puppies.

“The puppies that are raised here,” says Siegel, “they don’t know anything but trust, love, and respect… no one’s without a big brother or a big sister, or even a feline brother or sister. [They] get a lot of socialization, and we keep the litter together the best we can.”

The dogs also receive medical care like vaccines, and good nutrition (they eat a “gruel” made from The Farmer’s Dog as soon as they’re weaning, starting at four weeks old).

Holaway says that Pee Wee has seamlessly integrated into the family. “He loves cuddling with us,” he says. “He’s a wonderful sleeper, thank goodness.”

“They are a part of the family, and I treat them as such.”

Holaway is grateful that he’s been able to bring Pee Wee into his life. Reflecting on what dogs have meant to him, he says, “They’re not just a pet. To me, they are a part of the family, and I treat them as such.”

He’s also quick to credit Bosley’s Place for everything they’ve done to make sure dogs like Pee Wee—who start their lives under difficult circumstances—get the care they need.

“They were only a few days old when [Bosley’s Place and Pup and Cat Co.] took them into their care,” Holaway says of the seven puppies who survived the fire. “I can’t take all the credit—because, yeah, I rescued them from the fire. But they wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for rescues like Bosley’s Place, who helped them thrive and got them to the point where they were healthy enough to adopt.”