Adam Shaw and his dog Rocky, an eight-year-old Labrador retriever-husky cross, both rescued two girls from the icy waters of the North Saskatchewan River Sunday.    Photograph by: Ed Kaiser, Postmedia News , Postmedia News

There is a photograph of a noble animal and a man who appreciates the enterprise, fortitude and obedient courage his own attitude and his cross-species bonding is capable of producing. This man walking along a bridge over the North Saskatchewan River with his family on Easter Sunday saw the peace of the day transformed to a sudden emergency when they heard screams and looked over the bridge to see a little girl being propelled along the icy waters of the river, her slightly older sister attempting to reach and rescue her.

"I was just really scared", he said afterward. "I just really didn't want to fail. I really wanted to save them." And, giving credit where it was due, he also said "He's a terrific dog and he's very adventurous. He's always in and out of the water, he's always shocking us with jumping off the ice and stuff like that. I knew that he could jump in the water and swim back no problem."

The bond between the 27-year-old oil worker and his eight-year-old Husky-Labrador mix was strong enough, their level of communication sufficiently well established that Rocky was capable of following his human companion's desperate actions to save two children. The ten-year-old girl had finally fallen herself into the speedy, icy river swollen with spring run-off. Her rescue was far less complex than her sister's as the young man was able to stand on the edge of the ice and pull her to safety.

The rescue of her nine-year-old sister was another matter. She was floating and bobbing a metre or two from the edge of the melting ice, having been carried 50 metres downstream. Her arms and legs had been immobilized by the freezing water. As the man tentatively stepped toward her the ice crumbled, plunging both him and Rocky into the river. Rocky scrambled out of the water after prodigious effort, helped by the man who then grabbed the dog's leash to pull himself with the dog straining to aid, back onto shore.

He called out to the child that Rocky would be prepared to return back into the water, asking her to grab the leash as the dog swam close to her. When Rocky leaped back in the girl managed with obvious effort to take  hold of the leash, and it was then that the man instructed his dog to return to shore. Rocky was able to gain some traction, aided by the man, and  managed is way back onto the ice. At which point both Rocky and his human companion were able to pull the little girl to safety.