By Jeff Wiehe
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
ORLAND, Ind. — Orland firefighters rescued their first victim of the season to fall through lake ice Sunday — a dog named Sandy.
Firefighters were called by the dog’s owner to a home just off Lake Pleasant at 9:49 a.m. There, they found the part yellow Lab, part Brittany spaniel dog about 60 feet across a channel in the water where it had been walking over half-inch thick ice, according to the Orland Volunteer Fire Department.
Rhea Papenbrock, the dog’s owner, said she and one of her two sons were walking the dog, named Sandy the Jet, around the house when the dog went over to the channel. Sandy walked on some ice and then began sniffing around a muskrat den.
The ice around the dog began to crack, according to Papenbrock, and she fell in before she could make it back ashore. After Papenbrock and her son were unable to get the nearly 5-year-old dog out, they called 911. The dog was in the water about a half-hour, according to Papenbrock.
“It was like having my child out there,” she said. “I have twin 15-year-old boys, and I always say Sandy’s my daughter.”
Mike Garrison, a certified ice rescue technician, was tethered on shore and picked his way across the ice to the dog. The ice gave way on Garrison, and he ended up in the water with Sandy. At first the dog growled at him, but after a few sniffs of his hand she was willing to accept his help.
“I think she realized that we were there to help her, and it was like she was thinking, ‘I’m with you. Let’s go!’ ” Garrison said.
Those on shore pulled Garrison and Sandy back to safety, the ice before them breaking the entire way. Once ashore, Sandy was returned to her owners.
Kim Norton, deputy chief of the Orland Volunteer Fire Department, said some years the department hardly have any ice-water rescues, while other years there may be a half-dozen. Usually such rescues involve humans, but every once in a while, like Sunday, an animal is involved, he said.
“A dog’s a dog unless it’s your dog,” Norton said. “Then it’s part of the family.”
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