National news outlets are heralding Wausau, WI, firefighters for saving a yellow Lab from a burning house -- and reviving him using mouth-to-snout CPR.

On Tuesday, Kim Carlson arrived home to find her house in flames. Her fiance's 17-year-old son, Dwight Borchardt, had already gotten the family's Border Collie and two cats out, but 7-year-old Koda was still inside.

"I was prepared to douse myself with water to get him," Carlson told local news station WSAW. "[My fiance] said, 'You can't, Kim, you cannot go,' and I said, 'I have to get that dog, I love him.' "

She ran into the house anyway, but the smoke was so thick she had to turn back. After firefighters put out the blaze, they found Koda in a bedroom, unconscious.

"When they laid him down on the ground, we could see that he was struggling quite a bit to breathe," firefighter Jared Thompson told WSAW. He and fellow firefighter Jamie Giese began administering CPR and giving Koda oxygen.

When the two appeared on the TODAY show on Friday, Giese told Matt Lauer, "I have never been trained in [CPR for pets]. ... We could tell he was trying to breathe, and our training for humans is airway, breathing, circulation. We had no tools handy, so it was mouth-to-snout.'' They were able to revive Koda, who was rushed to an animal hospital.