His dog wouldn’t stop barking and didn’t sound right. He led the way to a drowning man

John Newman heard his Golden Retriever, Moe, barking the back yard on Wednesday. That’s not so unusual.

Moe often barks at cats or raccoons entering his domain, Newman told KRON. But this time Moe’s barks sounded different.

That was because “it’s a human being as opposed to a threat,” Newman told the station. “He’s a people dog. He loves people.”

Newman went to investigate. He found that an older man out for his morning walk had fallen into the Sacramento River and couldn’t climb out, reported the Pittsburg Police Department on Facebook. Newman, who lives in Pittsburg, Calif. between Sacramento and Oakland, pulled the man out but credits Moe for saving the man’s life by alerting him to the danger.

“I have no doubt about it,” he told KRON. “If you were to go in that water right now, you wouldn’t last very long at all.”

The older man, who was not identified, was taken to a hospital but is expected to be all right, the station reported.

Pittsburg police, who posted twice to Facebook about the incident, call Moe a “hometown hero” for his actions. On Wednesday night, an officer visited Newman and Moe with a police canine.

“Good job Moe!” wrote police on Facebook. “We are proud to say you really are a hometown hero!”

This story was originally published January 25, 2018 at 1:50 PM with the headline "His dog wouldn’t stop barking and didn’t sound right. He led the way to a drowning man."