A brave pet dog came face-to-face with a large monitor lizard rampaging through a Buddhist temple in Thailand.

Worried monks called wildlife rescuers for help after finding the fearless canine barking at the beast that had scampered into the Wat Khlong Phet Temple in Trat province on April 27 afternoon.

The officers arrived and discovered the lizard sitting in a basin just outside the temple. It skittered away after being disturbed but its escape route was quickly blocked off by the dog. Cornered on all sides, the monitor lizard hissed at the rescuers as they tried to capture it using their tools.

They first clamped its mouth shut with a noose before tying up all its legs and placing it inside a sack. It reportedly measured about 7ft-long and had several bite wounds from when the pooch attacked it.

A temple monk said: 'This afternoon, I heard the dogs in the temple barking in front of the pavilion for a long time. So I went to look and found that the dog was barking at the large monitor lizard. After that, I called the rescuers to help catch it.'

The injured lizard was later released into the wild.