Watch Colorado Deputy Rescue Dog Trapped in Burning Car: 'Nothing Else Really Mattered'

Deputy Michael Gregorek of Colorado's Douglas County Sheriff's Office pulled a dog named Hank out of a burning vehicle in January, and now footage of the rescue is going viral

A quick-thinking deputy saved a dog caught in a dangerous situation.

On Feb. 3, Colorado's Douglas County Sheriff's Office shared footage of Deputy Michael Gregorek's daring rescue on Facebook. In the dramatic video of the heroic effort, the deputy pulls a dog from a burning SUV to safety.

While the sheriff's office recently shared Gregorek's footage from the rescue on social media, the event itself happened in January.

In the clip shared to Facebook, Gregorek explains that when he first received the call about a vehicle fire in January, he didn't know details about the emergency. It wasn't until Deputy Gregorek arrived at the scene that he learned a pet was in danger.

"He starts screaming my dog's in the car," Gregorek said about what the dog's pet parent did upon the deputy's arrival. "It flipped [the] switch from 'It's obviously not a crime' to 'Now we have a life,'"

In response to the dog owner's distress, Gregorek quickly used a retractable baton to break open the vehicle's back window.

The video from the rescue shows the dog's owner trying to remove the canine, named Hank, from the car after Gergorek breaks open the back window, but he struggles to lift the pet, who is visibly weak and salivating.

"I knew he was really in a bad way, and so my thought only at that point was he's coming out with me, regardless of whatever else might be happening — smoke or fire. Nothing else really mattered at that point other than getting Hank out of the car," Gregorek said of the moment.

After Hank's owner steps aside, the rescue footage shows Gregorek lifting the canine out of the smoldering vehicle to safety. In the sheriff's office's Facebook post, the deputy explains that a neighborhood veterinarian checked on Hank after the incident and found that the dog didn't have any serious injuries from the fire and smoke.

Commenters on the video post, which has garnered over 400,000 views as of Feb. 7, poured on the praise for Deputy Gregorek's dedication to Hank.

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"Wow, what a wonderful happy ending! Great job, Deputy! You brought tears to every dog lover's eyes with this rescue!" one Facebook user commented, while another chimed, "A true hero and especially Hank's Hero!! As a fellow dog parent, so grateful for your quick actions!"

Gregorek says in the clip of the rescue why saving Hank meant so much to him personally.

"I'm a dog parent," he says in the video. "My only child is my dog, so I would've done the same thing whether it be baby human, dog, cat — a life is a life, and you kind of treat it as such."