We took the dogs out for a walk and there is a pond of which a quarter is covered with ice. The dogs are voice controlled so they run onto the ice and we call them back. We do that a few times and it’s clear that the ice is thick enough for them to walk on. However, we do call them back when they get to close to the edge. So the wife’s idiot dog goes to the edge and we call her back, but this time she walks off the edge into the water. Not fell in. Not the ice broke. She just walked in.
Of course she immediately tried to get back on the ice and can’t so she is hanging on and I start running to the ice-free shore closest to her. She’s panicing so she won’t swim to me and she goes under once and the wife starts to scream but she pulled herself up to hang on the ice again. My shoe gets stuck in the mud so I pull it off so now I’m in one shoe the other just a sock. I start running across the ice and I hear it start to crack. My years of little league pay off and so my spread-out-on-the-ice is really a head first slide that would make Pete Rose proud. I slide to her and pull her onto the ice just as the edge starts to break off. The dog goes running on the ice to the shore and I had to wade through 3 feet of icy cold water. In jeans. And one shoe.
You were very lucky and you were very stupid. There are stories every year of people who die exactly like this saving pets that fell in the ice, often because the owners brought them out to play around iced over ponds. It’s nice that you saved the dog but you put your family’s entire future at risk to do this. There are people who depend on you.
The picture of your wife explaining to your children, relatives and friends that you died going out on thin ice trying to pull a dog out of the water is one you need to keep in your head. Your friends will express sympathy publicly, but privately they will be going to each other “Wow what an irresponsible fucking idiot!”.
This reminds me of the scene in Man of Steel where the tornado is coming, and Martha Kent is worried about the dog that they left in the car in the path of the tornado. Where upon Johnathan Kent, who is not an invulnerable alien being, runs out to save the dog. (At this point, I paused the movie to let my wife know, in no uncertain terms, if our dog is in a life threatening situation that I could only resolve by risking my life, then that will be one dead dog.)
Good job. Glad to hear you and the dog are okay. It may have been a stupid thing to do in retrospect, but I’m sure I would have done the same idiotic thing if there was any chance of rescuing a loved on, beit pet or human. Instinct isn’t logical.
IMO, the whole time you were making the rescue your lizard brain part was weighing your chances , using your experience, knowledge, desires of your wife, odds of surviving, etc. every step of the way.
You could have been wrong, it happens but you were not in total ‘reaction’ mode but also in awareness, planning, calculating mode evidenced by your approach to the problem.
There comes a time in early and very late winter when I keep the curtains closed on the windows facing the lake. I started doing this after watching a large and very small dog crossing the lake when the ice was beginning to melt. The big dog might have made it to shore, but the little one wouldn’t have had a chance.
I trust your dogs will be leashed until Spring thaw.
As long as the OP has enough life insurance, him getting killed saving the dog might be a trifecta for his wife: a more ice-averse dog, no more irritating husband, and moolah!!!
Seriously, that was one each stupid thing to do. Far better to write off the dog as just another example of Darwin in action; one of hundreds of such events on that pond that day, most of which involve wildlife you never saw or cared about.
It was a 3 foot deep pond, right? It’s not like the guy dove from a life boat into the North Atlantic. I think the guy was awesome for saving his dog, and selfless for going in (it fucking hurts to be in ice water!), but you people piling on about how stupid he was are being unnecessarily harsh.
It doesn’t even sound like he needed medical attention for frost bite or hypothermia. How did he put his family’s future at risk? It was waist deep.
Good work man, and that dog sounds like an asshole. I have a dog like that: knows all its commands but chooses to ignore them sometimes, inconveniencing the fuck out of us.
It doesn’t matter what he knew; the depth of the water doesn’t change depending on what he knows about it. The greatest danger he faced is that presented by a waist-deep pond. So for a healthy male–not much. But he did face considerable discomfort and inconvenience; and I give him credit for that.
I watched my dog run out to the middle of a frozen pond in High Park one bitterly cold winter day, ignoring my calls, and all I could think was that if he went through the ice, I could do nothing more than wait for his bloated corpse to float up come spring.
Fortunately for me he went through right at the edge where all I had to do was haul him up over the surrounding concrete wall. Thin-coated lab mix, thought he would be freezing cold - he shook it off and didn’t miss a beat.
Like** Saint Cad**, I probably would have tried to save him if he’d gone through in the middle of the pond.