SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Richard Blasland Jr. was about an hour into his Tipperary Hill mail route one day in May when he heard a woman screaming for help.

The 37-year-old Liverpool letter carrier ran about 10 houses down the street, over a hill and discovered a woman and her dog being attacked by a pit bull. Blasland threw down his mail bag and started kicking the pit bull to get it to leave the woman and her dog alone.

"Everything had happened so fast," Blasland said. "My heart was pumping."

Blasland and the woman both screamed for the pit bulls' owner, but he was sleeping.

The woman, 26-year-old Nicole Raterman, of Whitney Point, had begun the day by going for a walk with her black and tan coonhound, Toby. When she reached the 400 block of Schuyler Street, Raterman heard barking and turned to see a pit bull charging out the window of a nearby house.

"Time kind of stopped because I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she said. "I was in shock."

The pit bull grabbed onto Toby's neck, Raterman said, and the dogs began fighting. Raterman screamed for help, tried pulling the pit bull off her dog and then tried kicking it. The dog knocked her down and bit her in the leg, she said.

Then Raterman spotted Blasland bounding over a hill toward her.

When kicking the pit bull didn't work, Blasland unleashed an entire can of Mace on the pit bull. But it didn't stop the dog. Blasland, like most letter carriers, had experienced close calls with dogs before. He became a letter carrier more than a decade ago after leaving the Army and in that time tangled with dozens of aggressive dogs.

But he had never experienced anything like this, he said.

After several minutes of struggling, the pit bull's dazed owner appeared and helped Blasland drag the dog off Toby, Raterman said. Both were bleeding.

As the owner was dragging the pit bull away, it tore free and attacked Raterman's dog again, Blasland said. Again Blasland and the pit bull's owner dragged the dog off.

"I only remember hearing Rich yell 'Take your dog and run,'" Raterman said.

Blasland guided Raterman and her dog across the street to an enclosed porch and built a barricade out of patio furniture for protection. Then Blasland called 911.

Raterman was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. She needed 19 stitches and briefly used crutches. Toby got a dozen stitches, had to have a drainage tube in his brain and wore a cone around his head. But both canine and owner have recovered. Blasland was not hurt.

Blasland was recognized today at the Franklin Square Station on West Division Street with a special hero award from the Postmaster General.

"I just did what anyone else would do. I didn't think it was a big deal,"