ATHENS — David Mercier was sleeping on the couch early Thursday when his puppy, Minna, started barking and wouldn’t stop.

“I thought she just wanted something to eat,” he said.

But the 11-month-old German shorthaired pointer wouldn’t let up. She jumped on the couch and kept barking furiously, as if trying to rouse him.

Mercier, 58, who sleeps on the couch while he recovers from injuries sustained in an all-terrain vehicle accident — including a broken collarbone, shattered shoulder blade, fractured elbow and four broken ribs — sat up and looked through the door glass facing his two-story barn and saw an orange glow. The barn was ablaze.

“I called 911 right away and I ran upstairs and told my wife,” Mercier, the town’s animal control officer, recalled later Thursday.

He ran outside and turned on a garden hose to try to douse his home with water to prevent heat damage from the fire. By that time the fire had nearly leveled the barn, which contained his woodworking shop on the second floor and lawn mower and other equipment stored on the first. Two campers parked behind the barn were destroyed by the fire.

“I was panicking,” Mercier said. “I was worried about my house, worried about my kids.”

He and his wife, Melanie, got the children, Tristan, 11, and Elena, 12, into a vehicle. A carpenter by trade, Mercier built both the house and the barn, the latter of which was 900 square feet on each of two floors, he said.

The Athens Fire Department was the first to arrive at the scene.

“They did a great job,” he said. “One of the guys came in, grabbed a hose and ran straight out to the fire. I was very impressed with him.”

Athens fire Chief Travis Thompson said Thursday that the fire, reported just before 1 a.m., destroyed the 30-by-30-foot, wooden barn.

“It was probably 50 to 75 feet away from the house,” Thompson said.

About 25 firefighters from Athens, Harmony, Madison, Skowhegan, Cornville, Canaan, Anson and Solon responded to the blaze, according to Thompson.

“They said it was pretty much flat by the time they got there, so it moved pretty quick,” he said.

The last firefighters left the scene after 3 a.m., he said. No injuries were reported.

Fire officials were unable to determine the fire’s cause and place of origin, according to Thompson, who said he notified the Office of the State Fire Marshal because no one was around the building at the time.

Mercier said state fire inspectors arrived later Thursday.

“He has no idea what happened, why it happened,” he said.

The property is more than two miles from Harmony Road. Mercier said he originally built the barn for horses about 20 years ago but gifted the horses away 10 or 11 years ago. He converted the second floor hay storage area into his woodworking shop and used the first floor for storage which, at the time of the fire, contained a lawn mower, gasoline, diesel for his tractor and other items. The barn was vinyl-sided and had a steel roof, he said.

“It’s just a big pile of steel now,” he said.

Mercier, whose barn was insured, said he is grateful for his puppy, Minna, who alerted him to the fire. The mostly white dog with some liver-colored fur was in a kennel by the door near Yeager, a 5-month-old German shorthaired pointer. Yeager’s kennel door was locked, but Minna’s wasn’t and that is how she was able to get to Mercier on the couch.

After things had settled down Thursday, Mercier, who has been Athens animal control officer more than 20 years, said he praised Minna, which, in German, means “love.”

“I was like, ‘Good girl, good girl,'” he recalled.