'They were trying to save me': Owner frustrated by his dog's annoying 2 AM habit, until he puts a night-vision camera and sees his doggo is actually keeping him alive

It's hard enough to get a good night's sleep nowadays without your dog licking your face every night around 2 AM. Between scrolling on our screens for hours, random city noises in the middle of the night, and construction, there are a million reasons why you could be waking up tired. But for this pupper pawrent, the reason was much, much simpler, and he has his doggo to thank for better sleep and his life!

He was frustrated with his adorable Shih Tzu-Maltese mix, who adopted an annoying habit of licking his face during the night. He thought maybe the doggo had too much energy or wanted to play, but it turned out that the doggo would notice when he stopped snoring, and consequently, breathing, then run over to lick his face and wake him up. He didn't discover this until he set up a night-vision camera and saw his heroic doggo in action.

This condition, where you stop breathing in the middle of the night, is called "sleep apnea", and it's very dangerous. Thanks to his diligent doggo, he potentially avoided a fatal chance of never waking up. Read through more of this doggo's and human's story below!

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I thought my dog had an annoying habit of waking me up at night licking me - turns out they were trying to save me!

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If you don't know what a CPAP machine looks like, it literally looks like the alien baby from Alien attached to your face, but in a slightly less terrifying way. It's a mask that you wrap around your head with a long tube that connects to an engine-powered machine. You kind of look like an elephant with a very long, but very skinny, trunk.
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Dogs are much more sensitive to our well-being than we think. If we're stressed or anxious, our dog immediately feels it and tries to calm us down. Or, she gets anxious with us, then we're just two anxious babies walking around trying to navigate the world. It's kind of wholesome.
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