A dog in Canada has emerged as an unlikely hero along with his master after they saved two girls from drowning in an icy river.
Rocky, an 8-year-old Labrador retriever-husky mix, and his master Adam Shaw were being hailed for their heroics to save the girls from icy North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Alberta, on Easter Sunday.
"If that man and dog weren't there -- I just try not to think of it," Miranda Wagner, the mother of Samara, 9, and her 10-year-old sister, Krymzen, told CNN affiliate CTV.
"I just want to give him a big hug and tell him he's my hero. If he wasn't there I wouldn't have my girls," Wagner said. "Doctors said two more minutes and Samara would have been gone."
Rocky and Shaw's heroics played out on the icy North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton on Sunday afternoon. The girls were tobogganing in a riverside park when they ended up on ice extending from the riverbank, their father, Corey Sunshine, was quoted by CNN affiliate CBC as saying.
"From what I was told was, one of the toboggans came off the snowbank and onto the ice and they were trying to come back and the ice broke," he said.
Shaw said he was walking on a bridge over the river when he heard screams. Looking down on the river he saw one girl in the icy water and her sister trying to pull her out.
By the time he and Rocky sprinted down to the river, both girls were in the water.
He was able to pull Krymzen up onto the ice, but the current was carrying Samara downstream, about 4 or 5 feet from the edge of the ice, her head going in and out of the water.
Shaw said, he tried throwing Rocky's leash to her but it didn't reach.
Samara had drifted 50 or 60 yards farther down the river, still bobbing in and out of the ice-cold water. Shaw and Rocky ran to her again, but she was still out of reach.
"I put the leash around Rocky and pushed him to get in the water and I told her if she could get a hold of his leash, we could get her back to the ice," Shaw said.
"He jumped in right beside her," he said, and the girl managed to get both hands on Rocky's leash.
Fire rescue crews arrived shortly thereafter and took the sisters for treatment.
