By CATHY DYSON

Billy Hughes wasn't thinking about his heart condition or his rheumatoid arthritis when he saw a dog struggling in the pond behind his house.

The little dog was trapped, unable to get to land because of the icy edge around the pond. Hughes saw it rolling--and taking longer to come up each time--and knew the dog was going to die if he didn't do something.

So, the 67-year-old Colonial Beach resident--who can't stand it when someone splashes cold water on him--jumped in. He reached the dog, who was about 15 feet from shore, and put him back on dry land.

"The dog took a few steps, turned around and looked back as if to say, 'Man, thank you,' then took off running," Hughes said.

Hughes' wife, Joyce, followed the ice-covered pooch, who ran to his home about a block away from the Hughes' house in the Ebb Tide Beach subdivision. She discovered the dog, Kobe, belongs to Charlene and Charles Franks, who were more than grateful when they learned what happened.

"Mr. Hughes did a wonderful thing," Charlene Franks said. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have my dog today."

The Hugheses and Charles Franks got together yesterday to recount the rescue. Billy Hughes reached out to shake his neighbor's hand and said, "I don't know why they're making such a big deal about this."

"You da man," Franks said.

The group then filled in the missing blanks about what happened to Kobe, a 3-year-old Havenese, a small breed similar to a Bichon.

One of the Frankses' granddaughters let Kobe out Saturday afternoon, about lunchtime. A little later, when someone asked where Kobe was, the girl said: "Pop-Pop, I let him out, and he went out on the ice."

Kobe usually stays in his yard because his owners have an invisible fence. On Saturday, Kobe wasn't wearing his collar.

Charles Franks figures Kobe, who weighs about 15 pounds, might have skated on the ice for a while before he fell in. By the time Joyce Hughes saw him, when she was feeding the birds, Kobe had gone a pretty good distance.

She told her husband she saw a commotion, and he said it was probably a beaver. Both looked again and realized the smoky-gray creature was a dog.