Watch VideoBlack Lab saved from icy pond
Story By: Bea Karnes
Source: NBC
Published Thu Feb 21, 2008, 02:05 PM MST
Updated Thu Feb 21, 2008, 04:31 PM MST
Cameras were rolling in Salina, Kansas Tuesday night as an animal control officer and a teenage boy, tried to rescue a dog from an icy pond. And during the process they fell in too.
Trapped in the icy pond, unable to pull himself out, Porter, the black lab was struggling just to keep his head above water. "His eyes and he was crying and I just couldn't let him drown out there in front of me," said Gabe Siem, the dog’s owner.
In an attempt to save his dog, Siem, had already fallen into the water three times by the time emergency crews responded to a 9-1-1 call. "I was just standing there freaking out," said Siem’s friend Jacob McBride who made the call.
Once on the scene, Jane Trostle, an animal control officer, and Siem tried to rescue Porter using a tree branch, but both ended up falling in themselves. "The officer said that Porter couldn't make it much longer out there, he was gonna drown if we didn't get him out within 4 minutes, 5 minutes," said Siem.
That's when Trostle decided to tie an extension cord around her and shimmy back out on the ice. "My thing was I didn't want the boy to go back out on the ice and I knew I had to do something or otherwise he would have," she said. But once again just as Trostle reached porter she fell in. "I felt the coldness and was thinking oh gosh hurry up lets get out of here and get out," Trostle recalled.
And thankfully, both Jane and Porter managed to swim to safety. Jane was whisked away to an ambulance and once cleared went back to work. As for Porter, he's much better too, his family grateful that Jane risked her life to save his.
And Jane, who says she was acting on instinct, still believes she would do it all again. "It just comes to you naturally when you love animals so much."
