INDIANAPOLIS — A 13-year-old boy escaped a house fire after the family’s pit bull alerted the boy to the fire.

Nich Lamb is legally deaf and wears hearing aids during the day, but he doesn’t sleep with them at night, according to the Associated Press. So when a fire started in Nich's home when he was home alone, he couldn’t hear the loud popping sounds created by the fire moving through the house.

That’s when the family’s pit bull, Ace, took action. It wasn’t easy to wake Nich up, the dog had to “get up on him in his face” and lick him until he got up, Nich’s mother, Lindsay Bernard, told CBS News.

But Nich did wake up and smelled smoke, grabbed one of his hearing aids and got out of the house. He called his mother and 911, the AP reported.

"It's amazing, because if he (Ace) wouldn't have been there, he (Nich) probably wouldn't have even woke up," Bernard said.
Nich escaped the fire with no injury, and Ace is being hailed as a hero.

“I love him a lot more now,” Nich told CBS News.