A three-year-old German Shepherd will be receiving a lot of love from its owners after it saved them from a petrol generator leak.
Jules and Kelly Davis and their kids Felix, Rocco and Louie live on the family’s hillside home in Esk Valley in Hawke's Bay.
Kelly told AM on Monday the kids were fine when she put them to bed, but when Nova woke her up by "barking like crazy" at around 1am, she found twins Felix and Rocco incoherent.
"I went into the first boy's room, Felix, and he was lying on the floor with vomit around him. Then I went into the next room, Rocco's, and he was the same. He was in his bed, but he had a pool of vomit around him," she told AM.
Kelly said at first a petrol generator leak did not come to mind and couldn't understand what had happened.
"I called my eldest son and he ran down the hall and said 'yeah I'm ok mum', but then he collapsed and he kept getting up and then collapsing again, so we knew pretty quickly there was something pretty wrong," she said.
It was at this point she started to think it could have been the petrol generator.
"All these things were going through our mind and we were thinking what is this? Then we both said, could it have been the fumes? We just thought we better get them outside as soon as we could, so we sort of dragged them out," she said.
"Then my husband called 111 and luckily, even though we had no service, no power or anything, the 111 call went through and the ambulance could come."
A day before this, Cyclone Gabrielle had torn through the Esk Valley, destroying homes and businesses, and knocking out power and cell phone reception.
Jules grabbed a petrol-powered generator and set up in the garage with the light of torches as they prepared for whatever the cyclone would throw at them.
Kelly said carbon monoxide from the petrol generator - which was 10 metres from the boys' bedroom - had filled their home.
"It didn't cross our minds that it was even something we needed to worry about," she said.
"We had it on for about an hour and a half, turned it off at 10pm and then the fumes had gone through the crack in the door because the door was closed, so it had literally gone through the crack from the garage to the house."
Once the kids were outside, Kelly said they started improving.
"Once we got them outside, they were just starting to rouse a bit. They weren't as drugged out, so they were still vomiting, but they were in much better shape. By the next day, we were all pretty shaken and I think we still felt a bit woozy, but we were okay," she told AM.
WorkSafe said carbon monoxide has caused serious illness and deaths in New Zealand workplaces.
At 800 parts per million, headache, dizziness, nausea and convulsions can occur within 45 minutes and leave people unconscious within 2 hours. At over triple that level, headache, dizziness and nausea can occur within 5-10 minutes, while death can happen within 30 minutes, according to WorkSafe.
In New Zealand, carbon monoxide exposure resulted in 379 deaths from 2006 to 2014, data from the Best Practice Advocacy Centre (BPAC) states. Intentional exposure accounted for 96 percent of these deaths.
WorkSafe said depending on the amount of exposure, carbon monoxide poisoning may cause permanent brain damage, heart damage, or foetal death or miscarriage in pregnant women.
But thanks to Nova, the Davis family is showing no signs of lasting impacts.
"She's [Nova] had a lot of love," Kelly said.
Watch the full interview with Kelly Davis above.
