“This meant to be. This is my dog, and he’s coming home with me,” Captain Paul Bryant says.

Bryant and the pup met when he rescued him from under a pile of rocks. A father and son bike riding in the area first heard the desperate dog’s cries.

Bryant dug him out from the rubble. Incredibly the little guy suffered no injuries.

It was actually the nearly 20 years North Charleston Fire Department veteran’s first puppy rescue.

After the South Carolina animal society checked out the animal, Bryant said he wanted to adopt the pup himself. And he’s naming him Rocky.