Mole just pulled a Lassie. The mixed-breed dog was out for a walk with his owner on a California trail when he began acting strangely yesterday. Mole "kept on tugging at my pant and whining, pulling me," Ramon Llamas tells Fox 11. The source of the commotion: something was trapped in a crevice between two boulders. "I see his big eyes and his face; I thought it was a bear," Llamas says. After he and some fellow hikers called 911, they discovered that the "animal" in the hole was in fact a man.
The man, who identified himself as Paul, was feebly asking for water; the hikers tossed some bottles into the hole. It took rescuers an hour to extricate Paul, who they believe had been trapped for as long as five days between the rocks, which were located down a slope about 200 feet from the main trail, reports the Press Enterprise; it's unclear how he got stuck. He was severely dehydrated and has been hospitalized, and will be OK, officials say. "He'd be dead if it wasn't for that dog," says a firefighter. "Yeah, I know," Llamas says. "But it hasn't really hit me yet, although he is a tough, good dog." (More dog stories.)