-Lie In Our Graves, Dave Matthews Band.
I had big plans for St. Patrick’s Day this year! One of my clients is Idaho Brewing Company (IBC); I’ve been helping them out with distribution sales. About three dozen bars and restaurants in the area serve IBC brews. I usually visit the bars and restaurants in the late morning or mid-afternoon, when managers and bar tenders are not as busy and have time to talk with me. But St. Patrick’s Day is a major beer consumption holiday, kicking off the spring/summer beer sales season, and I wanted to see where the action was. So I planned to do a little bar-hopping from about 4:00 p.m. on…
Maybelline, my dog, absolutely loves to go to the brewery and on my rounds to the restaurants and pubs. She is allowed inside several of them: the IBC tasting room is practically her home away from home. She doesn’t actually like to drink beer, but she does find wort quite delicious. (Wort is the liquid you get after you add hot water to mashed up barley sprouts and boil it; wort contains the sugars that are fermented by the brewing yeast to produce the alcohol content of beer.)
I knew the brewery and the pubs would be filled with people today, and remembering my dog trainer’s mantra that “A Tired Dog Is A Good Dog” I decided to take Maybelline for a long walk before we set out.
We strolled along our favorite route, which circles a big lake in the middle of a planned new housing development. No houses have been built here yet and the lake is in the middle of a big field, far from roads and cars. There is usually another nice dog or two running around, and there are plenty of geese and ducks to chase. Most days, I let Maybelline off her leash here. She runs after the water fowl; the birds will fly out to the middle of the lake, where they are out of Maybelline’s reach since she doesn’t swim and she isn’t quite sure about walking on ice.
On Thursday, however, the temptation of the plump geese taunting her proved too much for Maybelline. The geese had landed on an island of ice in the middle of the lake. One narrow bridge of ice remained on the west side of the lake, connecting the shore to the island. Maybe found it and made her way out, much to the dismay of the geese, who took flight.
I called to Maybe to “COME!” back to me just as the edge of the ice gave way and she fell under water. Her head and front legs quickly reappeared, and I could see she was trying to climb back up on the ice. But she couldn’t quite pull herself up. She started to whine, in a loud high pitch I have rarely heard. She was really frightened. She needed help.
I pulled off my down parka as I ran over the place where Maybe had run onto the ice and headed out to her. I walked slowly, trying to stay the cloudy white thick ice and away from the clear areas.
When I was about ½ way to Maybelline, I fell through. I caught myself at my shoulders, keeping my head and arms out of the water.
Strangely, I didn’t feel really cold, although at first I couldn’t catch my breath.
I remembered taking swimming as an elective in college with my sister Marilyn. We had to be at the pool at 6:00 a.m. Since it was the first class of the day, the pool door was always locked. We would shower up and then stand in wet suits, shivering, waiting for the instructor to open the door from the locker room to the pool. Keep in mind: this was in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in the winter. Now that was cold! But I felt just fine right now, in ice cold Idaho water.
We learned some basic water safety in that swimming class. “You can survive up to 15 minutes in a cold lake. Don’t tread water, conserve energy...” ran through my head.
I hung onto the edge of the ice and more thoughts of college days crept into my brain. I thought about my friend Mary. Mary had sent me a great package for Valentine’s Day just a few weeks ago. I had assembled some locally produced goodies to send back to her in turn. They were all sitting on my kitchen counter: Idaho Potato Vodka, some Idaho wine, and pint glasses from the brewery. If I die here, I thought, no one will know those are for Mary! And my mom would think I had a serious drinking problem.
Maybelline whined plaintively again, and I looked over at her. Her front legs and her head rested on the ice. She looked exhausted. I had to help her. Now.
I pushed myself up out of the water and onto the ice. I have absolutely no upper body strength, and I am not thin, so I don’t know how I managed to do this. Adrenaline? Somehow, I did it. I laid down on my belly. I should have done that from the start, to distribute my weight on the ice, I thought.
I squirmed my way slowly over to the edge of the ice and grabbed Maybelline around her front legs and pulled her out.
Once on the ice, Maybelline gave a good shake and licked my face. She seemed perfectly normal, like we did this every day. Maybelline followed me closely as I crawled cautiously back to the shore.
While we were out on the ice, another dog walker had arrived with his cute golden lab. He had called “911” when he saw us in the water, then called off the emergency when we found our way back to dry land.
The fellow very kindly met me at the shore with my coat, and asked me if I needed a ride. I still didn’t feel cold – in fact, I felt great! “No thank you, I am fine,” I said.
“Well, you better run back to your car then,” he advised. “Get dry and get warm before you get hypothermia.”
“What about her? Will she be okay?” I pointed at Maybelline, who was playing with his lab.
“Oh she should be fine,” the man said. “All that fur. Plus she was only in the water for what? Five minutes?”
Five minutes?
I still can’t believe it all happened so fast. It seemed like an hour had passed. Time really does slow down when you’re facing a crisis.
My teeth were chattering by the time we reached the truck. I patted Maybelline down and wrapped myself in towels and fleece from our “travel emergency” kit. Turned on the heated seats, blasted the heater and headed home for a hot shower and warm soup.
Today, we’re none the worse for the adventure. A few sore muscles but we’re fine. Maybelline's fur is clean, soft and fluffy from her impromptu bath.
We are very, very, very lucky.
Someone was watching out for me and my dog on March 17, for sure. Maybe it was St. Patrick. Or St. Roch – he’s the patron saint of dogs and bachelors, which seems fitting.
Whoever it was, thank you.
