Quick-thinking firemen showed their initiative when they helped revive a dog with breathing difficulties.

The worried owner - a tourist to Southend from Hertfordshire - took his elderly dog to the Sutton Road fire station on Monday when the breathing problems struck his hound.

Blue watch station officer Bob Moore said: "The gentleman was here on a day trip and he didn't know where to go.

"He came in with a ten-year-old girl and she looked very worried. The dog was in a bad way and he was having breathing difficulties.

"We cooled the dog down with water from a hose and then we put his head in an empty bucket and flooded it with oxygen."

The dog later went home happily with his owner.

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