A carp angler in Massachusetts should have some good fishing karma headed his way after saving two dogs from potentially drowning in an icy river Thursday. Zach Lalonde, who had his GoPro recording and shared a video of the rescue to Instagram.
A recent college graduate and YouTuber who specializes in hunting and fishing content, Lalonde says he’d headed to the Sudbury River on March 6 to fish for carp. He was fishing from shore and using his pedal kayak to drop baits in the middle of the river, which was open in certain places but iced over in others. He hadn’t caught a thing when he saw two black Labs on the opposite bank run away from their owner and chase a pair of geese onto a sheet of ice. That’s when the dogs tumbled off the ice and into the half-frozen river.
“Anytime the [dogs] tried to pull themselves up, the ice would break off,” Lalonde tells Outdoor Life. “It was just too slippery, and they couldn’t get their front paws up to lift themselves out of the water … but I don’t know if there’s any dog that would be able to do that.
Lalonde says the owner wasn’t hunting at the time, just taking his dogs for a walk. He had two other Labs that stayed with him on shore while the others floundered in the water.
“I hopped on my kayak, because it was either me or the owner who was going to grab them. I think he was getting ready to jump in the water himself, but then he saw me on the way over in my kayak.”
Lalonde pedaled out to the struggling Labs. He was able to pull the male dog into his boat. Then he lifted the female onto some firmer ice, where she walked back to her owner. Lalonde then pedaled downstream to reunite the owner and his four Labradors on shore.
“It’s probably better that he let me do it,” adds Lalonde, who says the dog’s owner would have been risking hypothermia had he jumped in the water. The man wasn’t wearing a life jacket and did not have cold-weather immersion gear; While the current was relatively slow, it wouldn’t have been particularly safe for him to get in the water with the two panicked dogs. He was extremely lucky that Lalonde was nearby with a boat and beyond grateful for the help.
“[The owner] was just standing there like, ‘Man, words can’t express how thankful I am.’ I think he kind of knew he would have had to go for a swim, and I don’t think anybody really wanted him to do that.”
The incident is also an important reminder that rock-solid recall is an essential command for keeping your dogs safe.
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Lalonde spent the rest of his day getting skunked. But he expects that karma to come around eventually.
“Man, as long as it carries over to spring fishing,” Lalonde says, “I’ll be happy.”
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