For the Love of Dog

Without thinking, I lowered myself carefully down a four-foot bank onto the ice. I had seen a show on cable in which an outdoorsman demonstrated how to distribute his weight on the ice by lying flat. I figured if I could slide on my rear end out close to where she was, Looly would feel a pang of adrenaline and pull herself up on the ice, toward me.

Why I believed, even for a moment, that ice broken by a 65-pound dog would not cave in under my 200-plus pounds, I am not sure. But I knew the surface had to be thicker closer to the shore, and I was making steady progress. I had come within five feet of Looly and was reaching for her forelegs when the ice broke again. I plunged completely under. The chill of the water shocked me like a dental drill hitting an exposed nerve. I spit and tried not to swallow, but I could not rid my mouth of the canal's contents, a gravel-like texture that tasted of sulfur. I moved toward where Looly had fallen through. Now we both flailed. I had played out the scenarios as I was sliding toward her, and what I came up with was this:

I fall through to a bottom of probably four or five feet, get my footing, lift Looly onto ice thick enough to hold her and fight my way back up on the ice myself. The canal, so tranquil during the spring and summer, was a body of still water. Its only apparent danger seemed to be its pea-green and brownish color, its dirty sediment and lingering stench. But I couldn't touch bottom. And I couldn't lift Looly while trying to keep myself afloat. Within a minute, I knew we were both in trouble.

I turned back toward the shore and lunged forward, trying to get my torso up on the ice. But every time I got my forearms up, the ice broke again, and I went under.

Within two minutes, I couldn't feel my hands. My lower extremities were beginning to feel numb, too. Looly was in worse shape. She had been in the water a minute longer than I had, and her frantic paddling had slowed to short, measured strokes. She kept trying to rest her paws on my back and my arms, to keep her head above water. I could feel her claws digging into my back. She didn't have long.

I tried two more times to lurch my upper body up onto the ice, but each time it broke again, and I was briefly submerged. I was still very close to the middle of the canal, and the numbness had now spread to my forearms. I still couldn't stand.

The small pool of water we shared was just a few feet from where we had fallen through. The ice couldn't bear the weight of my lunging, but I found a stable piece thick enough to rest on and keep my head out of the water. I propped my left arm up, like a kid leaning against the side of a community swimming pool in the deep end. Then, resting the back of my neck and head against another corner of the punctured ice, I put my right arm under the dog, just below her abdomen, like a large fishing hook.

I was kicking to stay afloat. I didn't have much strength left when I jerked my right arm upward as hard as I could, using it to catapult Looly out. As her hind legs began to clear the water, I shoved her bottom for good measure. She just made it onto the ice.

Amazingly, it didn't crack. She scampered up the bank, a bit disoriented, and shook off for a good, long while -- sprinting down the towpath like she always does when she gets out of the water. She soon came back and seemed to realize her owner was in danger.

I had been in the freezing water for about three minutes, I figured. I half-remembered reading an article that said hypothermia could set in between four and seven minutes. In the article, a man fell off a log into a freezing stream. He grabbed a branch to prevent himself from being taken downstream, but none of his companions could reach him. Resigning himself to his fate, the man calmly gave an oral living will to his grief-stricken friends above, knowing he would lose all feeling soon and eventually drift away to an icy death.

I drew in deep breaths and paused maybe 10 seconds. I figured I had one minute, maybe two, of physical exertion left. I felt nothing in my hands and arms, which just slid off the ice each time I tried to pull myself up. The thickness of the ice had supported the dog's weight closer to shore, but now I couldn't break it solely with my hands. The solitude I had enjoyed moments earlier was now a terrifying loneliness.

I began to consider my options and arrived at a plan I should have thought of before I went in after her.