It was 10:30 a.m. on the morning of February 26 when A.J. Bondy realized his dogs were missing. He’d let Rex and Charlie, two bernedoodle brothers, out into the backyard. Usually they ran around, went to the bathroom, and came slinking to the backdoor when they got too cold. But this time they didn’t come back.
A.J. poked his head out and looked around. There was no sign of them. He and his wife, Jessica, own a home in Lakeshore, Ont., near Windsor. Their backyard has a dock that leads onto a canal. “But the dogs don’t usually go down there,” says A.J.
He went back inside and fired up his home security system. On the recorded video, he watched Rex and Charlie meander down to the dock, hop onto the frozen canal, and takeoff. Two runaways.
Rex and his brother Charlie/Photo Courtesy of A.J. and Jessica Bondy
The canal is a straight shot to Lake St. Clair, an 1,100 square kilometre lake split by the Canada-U.S. border. The weather had been warm lately, up to 13 degrees, meaning the canal and lake were melting. And there was fog and rain in that day’s forecast.
A.J. jumped into his vehicle and drove over to the Sandbar Waterfront Grill, a local restaurant near the mouth of the canal. In the snow, he saw pawprints but no dogs. The canal was spotted with several metre-wide holes from the water pushed out by homeowners’ sump pumps. “I started getting nervous that they’d fallen in one,” says A.J.
He scanned the lake with a pair of high-powered binoculars. That’s when he spotted Rex and Charlie out on the ice. A.J. walked out onto the frozen lake and called them. Charlie came bounding back but not Rex. He was running the wrong way, further out and to the east. Not wanting to risk falling through, A.J. returned home with Charlie and met up with friend Jesse Schouten, the owner of the dog training school Lucky K-9. The two got A.J.’s son’s electric dirt bike, equipped to ride on the ice, and drove back to the lake.
A.J. rode the dirt bike a kilometre out onto the ice through fog and rain but couldn’t see Rex. Eventually, he turned around. “Charlie and Rex usually don’t separate,” A.J. says. “I think what happened is because of the rain and the fog, they both were sniffing something, and I think Rex probably looked up and didn’t notice Charlie wasn’t there, and then just started running.”
A.J. and Jessica reached out to the fire department, the Ontario Provincial Police, the coast guard, and animal control. All four agencies said they couldn’t help unless the couple knew exactly where Rex was.
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Through binoculars and the use of a drone, the couple kept catching glimpses of Rex, but then he’d disappear, his white fur blending with the ice and snow. He was so far out that even through the binoculars he looked like a speck on the horizon.
“We started losing light,” A.J. says. “We couldn’t see him at all, so we were panicking a little bit.”
Temperatures were dropping below freezing overnight and the couple was worried Rex wouldn’t survive the cold. Jessica placed dog treats wrapped in family sweaters at multiple parkettes along the shoreline, hoping Rex might find his way to one.
The couple spent most of the night awake, worrying. Jessica was back out by 5 a.m. the next morning.
A friend had posted on a community Facebook group when Rex first went missing, asking neighbours to keep an eye out for him. It was reshared 500 times within the first few hours. By mid-morning on February 27, the shoreline was swarming with neighbours searching for Rex with binoculars. “More and more people kept coming out,” says A.J.
Eventually, Jesse Schouten spotted him, three kilometres out in the middle of the lake. He appeared to be moving. That’s when A.J. and Jessica got a call from Matt Leavoy, a local snowmobiler who offered to head out onto the ice and get Rex. At the same time, Matt’s cousin Jamie Leavoy and another local, Steve Coulter, offered to put on their inflatable gear and walk out onto the ice. The fire department showed up and waited on the shore to ensure everyone was safe.
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Matt rode his snowmobile to the middle of the lake, risking the melting ice. A.J. and Jessica used a drone to track him, directing him towards Rex over the phone. When Matt found the dog, Rex ran, skittish after a long night. But Matt caught up to him, got off his snowmobile, and lowered himself onto the frozen lake, calling Rex’s name. Rex came to him.
Matt drove the dog to Jamie and Steve who had made it a kilometre out and were waiting with a leash and dog treats. They walked Rex the rest of the way to the shore.
Rex’s Rescue Crew/Photo Courtesy of A.J. and Jessica Bondy
“We started walking out to meet them, my wife, my son, and I,” says A.J. “Jessica’s bawling, I’m tearing up, and we look back and there’s like 30 people on the shoreline all crying. It was so emotional.”
Jessica had the vet on standby, but Rex didn’t have a scratch on him. In fact, he greeted almost all his rescuers on the shoreline. But when he got home, Rex curled up and went to sleep. “He tried to walk up the stairs to come to bed,” Jessica says. “He stepped on the first step and kind of collapsed. It was pure exhaustion.”
A.J. and Jessica theorize that Rex spent the entire night running around the lake, trying to find a way home. He’d been out there for more than 28 hours. “Had he stopped running, I don’t think he would have survived overnight with the temperature drop,” Jessica says.
Rex is now back to his normal self, and A.J. and Jessica thank the community for it. “Everyone stopped what they were doing, and they all rallied around to help him,” says Jessica. “We didn’t know any of these people. We had never met them. It was incredible.”
Rex taking a much needed nap/Photo Courtesy of A.J. and Jessica Bondy
In honour of the rescue, Steve Coulter, one of the men who walked out onto the ice to retrieve Rex, started selling “Rex the Ice Dog” t-shirts. Steve runs Crew.45 Army, a non-profit that helps troubled youth in the area. All proceeds from the t-shirts are being used to support youth initiatives.
As for Rex, his future holds some well-earned meals, a few mid-afternoon naps, and a whole lot of adoring admirers. “He’s kind of become a local celebrity around here,” says Jessica.
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