It was a father-son moment the community will remember for a long time.
On Saturday, Ross Skinner and his son Chad rescued another family’s dog after he got stuck on a pond in the small town of Isle aux Morts, Newfoundland.
The dog’s owner, Dawn Lawrence, told CBC News that one of her kids was having a sleepover when they let their dog Boston out of the house. Because Lawrence was the only one home to watch the kids, she didn’t keep a close eye on him.
The dog often goes out on his own, which is why Lawrence knew something was up when he didn’t return or come to her calls. Shortly after, she got a call from a friend down the road to see if her dog was at home.
“I made a joke about, why, what did he do?” Lawrence told CBC.
That’s when Lawrence’s neighbour told her that there was a dog out on the pond near her house. The ice on the pond was extremely thin, and it seems the dog eventually figured that out too.
“He just sat there paralyzed in fear,” Lawrence said. “He watched me walk all the way around [the pond], I had treats with me but he wouldn’t move.”
Lucky for Boston, his antics drew a crowd, and once the Skinners saw the predicament he was in, the father-and-son duo drove back home to get a boat. In the meantime, Boston patiently waited and Lawrence hoped for the best.
“I [could] not come home and tell four kids that their dog just drowned,” Lawrence said.
When the two men returned with the boat, they immediately began paddling through the ice toward Boston, careful not to scare him. Luckily, the dog stayed in his place, and after a few dramatic minutes, they were all back on shore safe and sound.
Lawrence told reporters that the whole experience made her feel “more at home.”
“I’m not from here originally. It’s a very small community [of] about 600 people. That sort of coming togetherness, you don’t see as much in the big places.”
