It was every parent’s nightmare.
On the evening of March 25, Wylie, Texas couple Amber and Taylor Newsom were getting their daughters ready for bed when they heard their dog, Marley, barking. When they went to go check to see what was going on, they were met with a strange man wielding a knife inside their home.
But Marley wasn’t going to let the man hurt her family. The black Labrador Retriever jumped into action — lunging and biting at the man to fight him off.
Marley had him backed into a corner. In the process, Taylor was able to start punching the man in defense. At one point, the man stabbed Marley up to six times in the chest and mouth area. He also stabbed Taylor in the arm and stomach.
“This could’ve been a lot worse,” Taylor said in a video on Facebook. “This could have been deadly.”
But luckily, neither were badly hurt and now Marley is being hailed as a hero for fighting off the man and protecting her family. She loves them so much that she was willing to do anything to save them from the intruder.
The family doesn’t even want to think about what would have happened if their loyal pooch hadn’t been there.
“The story plays out very differently if Marley’s not there,” Taylor Newsom told Fox 4 KDFW.
Amber Newsom could hardly hold back tears when speaking with reporters about Marley and her response to the incident.
“She’s our hero,” Amber said. “If it hadn’t been for her, that guy could’ve gone [into our children’s] rooms or something.”
The intruder, later identified as 53-year-old Thong Pham, fled the scene and police found him hiding alongside a creek nearby. Due to the incident, he’s now charged with animal cruelty and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“We’re glad he got caught and is going to face a case for what he did to our dog,” Taylor said. “She’s always been protective… so it didn’t surprise me that she would bark. But the way she cornered him and held him there and didn’t engage until I did… that was impressive. You’d think she had been trained, but that was pure instinct.”
For now, both Taylor and Marley are recovering from their injuries and both, thankfully, will be fine. The family is surely giving Marley some extra treats and loving for her heroic behavior — something that very well could have saved the lives of her family.
“She seems almost back to normal although she still has her wounds,” Taylor said. “But they seem to be healing well. She’s the sweetest dog and just loves her people.”
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