(The column below was published in The Review on March 28, 1994. I offer it in loving memory of my friend Frank C. Dawson.)

Last week Frank “Digger” Dawson risked life and health to save his family dog. The fact that the dog in question is a stupid old fat retriever which nobody in the family likes – in fact, a dog that everyone, including Frank, wishes were dead – makes his act of heroism all the more heroic.

It happened in the early evening on one of the last days of this winter. Digger and his wife Gretchen were out on their customary walk along the wooded paths near their country home. The sun was low in the west. The air was chill.

Abby, the obese canine, went gallumping ahead.

The Dawsons have two small ponds, which, being shielded by evergreens on the south, retained a thin crust of ice, a reminder of the waning winter’s severity.

It had become Abby’s habit on winter walks to waddle across the pond ice. Apparently nothing in either her less than impressive mental faculties or deep-buried doggy instincts warned her that the ice, having melted to practically nothing, might no longer be safe.

She fell through in the middle of the pond and could not get out.

“Aaarooooo. . . Aarooooo!” wailed pathetic woebegone pitiful Abby, her front paws and head clinging to the ice crust while the majority of her vast bulk, like an iceberg, resided below the surface, her rear legs, we may assume, dog-paddling in futility.

Digger instantly sized up the situation and formulated a plan of action. He loped to the other pond to get a canoe, hoisted it over his head and carried it back to the scene of the calamity.

He also fetched an axe.

Upon his return he found that one of his male offspring, who shall go nameless here for obvious reasons, was engaged in tossing a rope out to Abby. We can only wonder what this fruit of the Dawson loins expected Abby to do with the rope. Grab it in her teeth? Woof the Wonder Dog might have made that mental connection, but not Abby.

With Frank’s arrival the rope was put to better use. Strong hands would remain on the shore, holding one end of the rope, tethering Admiral Byrd Dawson as he embarked solo across the ice cap.

The canoe was launched with brave Digger in the bow, axe in hand, somewhat resembling those Viking re-enacters we saw in Winter Olympics broadcasts from Lillehammer.

Picture Frank leaning far out to hack at the ice and pull the canoe forward. Picture the landward crew holding tension on the rope around his waist. Hear Abby aaroooing in anticipation of a visit from her master, wagging her tail under the water.

Digger had hoped to at least partially slide atop the ice but it would not support the canoe and in fact impeded it. He chopped a clear channel with the axe and also used it like a mountain climber’s ice axe to hook and pull the craft forward.

Chop, chop, chop. Slowly, laboriously, Frank chopped his way toward a fading and hypothermic Abby, whose arrooooos were sounding weaker by the minute. Frank felt the effects of the icy water, his hands and arms growing numb.

He was within 10 feet of the dog when it happened. He hacked downward and Sploosh! The axe slipped from his stiff fingers and disappeared through the ice.

No time or energy to go back for another. Frank leaned over the bow, pulling he canoe with his bare hands, palming along the ice, clawing it with his fingernails. Somehow he kept going.

Six feet away, four feet, two feet, finally he was there, he had made it to the dog, he had gotten to Abby in time.

Then he found he couldn’t lift the dog into the canoe by himself, and she wasn’t making any effort to help.

“Come on, Abby. Come on, girl!” Digger pleaded.

Digger tried pulling her by the front legs. No go. When he leaned over to lift her, the canoe almost swamped. He couldn’t get a good grip on her with his frozen hands.

This was a big dog, a big, fat, soaking wet, obese, stupid, exhausted, half-frozen imitation of a dead sea lion. Nanook of the North would have had trouble landing her.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

He reached toward her other end, plunged his arm under the cold water, latched onto her tender private region and simultaneously squeezed hard and pulled.

Abby gave a mighty yelp! Looking like Shamu at the conclusion of the show at Sea World, she leapt free of the water and bellied out onto the ice. Frank tumbled her into the canoe. The shore crew pulled them to safety.

An hour later, Abby was warm and dry by the fire, dreaming of table scraps, while Digger was in Youngstown, delivering one of his well-honed humorous, inspirational speeches to a scheduled gathering of bankers. He shuffling his notes with hands to which feeling had finally returned, never mentioning his heroic rescue.

Newspapers are forever printing stories about dogs saving their masters. I thought you should read one about a master saving his dog.