A kidnapping attempt was thwarted in Indianapolis on Tuesday when a family's dog stopped an armed would-be kidnapper from leaving the family's home.

Police say a man and a woman broke into the home of Nayeli Garzon-Jimenez through the back door while her husband was at work. Garzon-Jimenez was on the phone with her husband, Adolfo Angeles-Morales, at the time of the break-in.

"She started screaming and crying, and said, 'Someone just stuck their hand in the door,'" Angeles-Morales told WISH-TV. "The guy said, 'Give me the money or we take the baby.'"

"The man said, 'Money, money,'" Garzon-Jimenez said. "I said, 'I don't have any.'"

The woman then grabbed her 3-month-old girl and attempted to flee through the back door.

"But there was something else waiting for her at the back door," WISH-TV reported.

"One of the doggies," a pit bull mix, "didn't let her go through the back door," Angeles-Morales explained.

The woman turned around, "threw the baby back" at Garzon-Jimenez and the perpetrators fled the scene.

The mother, who was hit in the head with a gun during the melee, was treated for cuts and bruises at a local hospital, and was released. The baby was unharmed.

Indianapolis police are now searching for the suspects: "a black man around 35 years old, 6-foot-2, heavy set with light skin, a close-cut beard and acne scars" and "a black woman in her mid-20s about 5-foot-10, heavy build with braided hair pulled back in a ponytail" and "two lip piercings and an eyebrow piercing."

They were driving "a 2002-2007 chocolate-brown van with tinted windows and windows that extend down the passenger side."

There might be a dent in the passenger-side door, police added.