Barbara Garcia was clutching the dog in the bathroom of her home in Moore when the monstrous twister ripped through the city yesterday.
After the storm passed, she pulled herself from the wreckage of her house uninjured, but could not find her canine companion until a local TV news team arrived to interview her.
As Garcia calmly described how she escaped from the tornado, a crew member spotted the dog sheltering under a pile of mangled metal.
As many as 91 people are dead, including 20 children after the 200mph twister flattened two schools and entire neighbourhoods in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.