Randy Earl was clinging to the side of his boat, after it capsized in the waters off Core, West Virginia. But even though his life was literally hanging by his hands, when rescuers finally came, he selflessly pleaded with them to save his companion first.

It sounds like a noble gesture and it was - especially when you consider that his companion was his beloved dog Lacy. The black spaniel mix was sitting in the vessel with Earl as he went out fishing, when the craft suddenly turned over. And the owner's only thoughts were of saving his precious pooch.

As the life-jacket clad man kept his cold hands clutched to the hull of the 12-foot boat, he coaxed Lacy onto the top of the ship and told her to stay put. He remained in the water, which had a temperature of about 10C.

When another vessel finally arrived to pull him out, Earl insisted they take the dog onboard first. "When the boat flipped over, I put the dog on top of the boat," he told a local newspaper.

Another fisherman was watching it all unfold from the shore. "He asked the state trooper to take the dog first," Jan Thorn remembers of the officer who paddled out to the site. "It was very touching."

The 53-year-old and his best friend are both fine and back on terra firma. But why did Earl put his beloved pet ahead of his own skin? The answer is equally poignant.

He and his wife lost both of their children in a car accident 15 years ago and the animal has helped take a small amount of that hurt away, giving them an object to pour their love into. "That dog is like a child to us," he relates.

It's not clear what caused the boat to tip over.