Puppies kept lost 3-year old Jaylynn Thorpe warm in the woods.

Ingram said her son slept sandwiched between the two 12-week-old puppies, which officials say helped keep him warm through the 21-hour ordeal.

Jaylynn wandered away late Friday afternoon from his baby sitter, who is Ingram's niece.

"The dogs went with him," Ingram said. "He told me he left that yard going hunting and fishing."

"We didn't forget the issue that 17 degrees was almost unbearable," said his father, James Thorpe.

"People all over the State of Virginia was down there looking for that child. For a while there, one time, I didn't know whether they would find him or not," said the child's grandmother and guardian, Katherine Elliot.

Officials said the lost little boy and the two family puppies wandered up to a mile in the dark, even across a highway, but it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that members of the search team found him sitting by a tree, the two puppies nestled against him.

The little boy didn't say anything, according to rescue team member Jerry Gentry, but instead "just opened his arms up like, 'I'm ready to go.'"