Not all heroes wear capes. This hero wears a brown uniform and drives a big brown truck. Ryan Arens, a UPS delivery driver, was making deliveries along his route last month when he heard a dog in distress and leapt into action.
“I heard a dog just screaming bloody murder. It sounded like she was in a bad, bad place.” (KRTV.com)
“I could see the dog trapped about 10 to 15 feet off of shore, with ice all around it.” (greatfallstribune.com)
On a nearby pond was Sadie, a two-and-a-half-year-old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon who had wandered onto the ice and fallen through. She was clinging with everything she had trying not to go under, but she was losing the fight.
Once Arens saw what was happening, he dropped everything and rushed to help. He got assistance from a man named Mike who was nearby in a rowboat, but the boat couldn’t make it out to Sadie.
“I stripped to my boxers and got the guy out of the boat. Then I slid the boat out onto the ice, using it to distribute my weight. I shimmed out to where the ice was thin. She was starting to go under.”
“So the boat stayed on the ice. I’m already in the water, I might as well swim. So I swam out to Sadie, grabbed her collar, swam back to the ice, hoisted her up — I didn’t know how I even did that because I couldn’t touch the bottom. It’s sixteen feet deep.”
The man with the boat lived nearby and happened to be a retired veterinarian. He looked Sadie over, ran a warm shower and held her in it. A thermometer told them that had Sadie’s temperature dropped any lower she could have gone into cardiac arrest.
When animal control arrived they took Sadie and were able to reunite her with her person. She was back home in almost no time. Arens put his uniform on and finished his route as though it had all been a part of a day’s work.
Sadie’s life had been saved, and later, she was able to thank Arens. As luck would have it, he had a package to deliver to Sadie’s house the next day!
“I had a delivery for the guy with the dog. He said ‘Hey, do you want to meet Sadie?’ I said I’d love to. He opened up the door and she came running up to me. We had a reuniting. It was pretty cool.”
“She was freaking out, and when he let her out, she ran to me. She must have remembered me. It sure made me feel good.”
