2 dogs rescued after running down Sunrise Highway in the middle of the blizzard

Two dogs are safe on Long Island after a terrifying run on Sunrise Highway in the middle of Monday's blizzard. 

A snow plow driver came to their rescue in near-whiteout conditions. 

Kenny McGowan is no stranger to dangerous and snowy conditions while plowing the roads, spotting hazards from fallen branches to black ice. What he saw Monday during the blizzard, however, stopped him cold. 

"I went right into protection mode"

"I looked over and I seen something in the corner of my eye right there, and then I looked in my mirror and I saw a dog. I'm like that's a dog running," he said. 

It wasn't only one dog. There were two, running side by side in the middle of Sunrise Highway and in the middle of a blizzard. 

"I immediately put my sirens on, and stayed right behind them," McGowan said. "Being an animal lover, being a father, I went right into protection mode ... I was gonna do whatever I had to do to stop these dogs from getting hurt."

He said once he was in a safe position, he parked sideway across the highway near Town Hall, using his truck as a shield. 

"They ended up going into the median, right in the middle, where it was like three feet of the snow, and they, like, buried themselves in the snow," McGowan said. "One dog went laid on here, and the other dog went on top of him, so I was like, I knew right away ... that they were close, they were family members, they were sisters." 

"They definitely got lucky"

With the help of other good Samaritans, he was able to wrangle up the two Lab mixes, who did not have collars, and put them in the back of his snow plow to transport them directly to the town's animal shelter. 

"If nobody would have found them, they could have froze," kennel attendant Danny Deutsch said. 

The dogs were at the animal shelter for less than 24 hours. Caretakes realized very early on that they were bonded and said at no point were they separated. 

That bond may have helped save them. When the staff scanned for microchips, only one registered at first. 

"One of them we were able to scan for a microchip, and then we found out that the other one did have a microchip, it just wasn't in the traditional spot," kennel attendant Angela Diangson said.

"That's a family member"

The two sisters who refused to leave each other's side in the blizzard are now safe with their family. The family of the two dogs picked them up Tuesday morning and say they're grateful. 

"Everybody should think that way ... It's somebody else's pet," McGowan said. 

It's still not clear how the dogs got out in the first place.