Firefighters go to work knowing they might not return at the end of their shift.

"It's part of the job, I was more upset with myself for getting burnt," said Todd Gray, a Fulton firefighter. "I would've been just happy to do my career as a firefighter without getting burnt."

On February 29, Todd Gray and Dan Berry faced the perils of their job up close and very personal. They received third-degree burns and torn ligaments, all to save a stranger's life.  Kim Frye, 46, was seconds from losing her life when Gray and Berry reached her. Frye was unconscious in her bed.

"While the two other firefighters were in the room rescuing the woman, one part of the house had flashed over," said Captain Vicki Schulte of the Fulton Fire Department.

"That's when everything catches on fire all at once, it's about 1,000, 1,200 degrees," said Gray.

Kim lost everything but her life that night.

"I just hope that everything turns out all right for her," friend Mike Nickens said. "She's ready to come home."

Nickens knows what Frye's been through, because he's gone through it too.

"She said 'Mike just let me go, let me go,' and I said 'I can't do that," Nickens said about Frye. 

Frye and Nickens were asleep as the flames took hold around midnight.  Nickens says he would be dead right now if it wasn't for the determination of a fiery little hero.

"I got up and looked in the driveway, there wasn't nobody in the driveway so I laid back down but he kept barking," he remembered. "I said he's barking for some reason."

Frye's dog, B.J., broke out of the basement to get to his master's bedroom in order to wake her before it was too late.

"He was at the door right there, scratching and barking, and I opened up the door and he came in," Nickels said. "He grabbed her by the t-shirt he was trying to help me pull her off the bed."

"If it wasn't for the dog we could've had different results," Schulte said.

When firefighters arrived they reported heavy black smoke pouring through the front of the home, yet they still reached Frye, pulling her through a front bedroom window before escaping through it themselves. All the while B.J. was circling the home, barking for his owner. Neighbors say he didn't leave the area for days.

Now more than a month after the smoke has cleared, Frye's six-year-old pit bull B.J. faces a fatal countdown.

"It's a very hard thing to have to do," said Laura Schroer, an animal control officer. "But especially a dog that is not meant to be at a shelter."

After days of waiting for Frye to return, animal control picked B.J. up, taking him to Garrett Animal Shelter. 

"At first he was a bit shy, which is not unusual ya know, this is a pretty scary place," Schroer said.

The countdown to euthanizing a dog there is usually three weeks, but B.J. charmed his way to six weeks and counting.

"He seems like he gets very attached to his people," Schroer said. "He seems like he's very loyal and very loving."

The animal shelter doesn't know how much longer it can wait.

"This would be kinda of a sad ending for a hero," Schroer said.

"If it wasn't for the dog we both probably would've died," Nickens said. "If it wasn't for him."

As Frye fights through the pain of skin grafts and learning to use her hands again, she wishes she could touch her hero's life as he has touched hers.

"She worries about B.J.," Nickens said. "She cried all day yesterday about him; all day she cried, she loves that dog, she raised that dog, and that dog loved her."

"If you were to adopt him it would be $77," she said.

Now she waits fearing that nobody will adopt B.J., that no one will come to his rescue like he did for her.

"He did what he did because he loves her," Nickens said. "He really does love her."

Recent news to KOMU on Tuesday is that a family adopted B.J., but the hero dog isn't in the clear just yet - he won't join his new home until next week.