Spotting a dog struggling to stay afloat in a icy Vermont River, Chris MacRitchie never hesitated.
He jumped into the frigid waters and waded over to the dog, gently pulling it ashore where his wife, Erica, draped it with a sweatshirt. The dramatic rescue of the dog Friday afternoon in Berlin, Vermont, was caught on video by his son and has been shared widely on social media.
MacRitchie’s son, Ace, first spotted the dog as they were going through the drive-thru of a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. When they reached the river embankment, the father of two felt he had no choice but to save the pooch.
“It was like one of those moments everyone probably has in their life like you’re going to make a decision … either trying to get in the water and help her or the alternative,” MacRitchie said. “So, I felt I was obligated to at least try to fetch this dog out of the river, as I have two dogs myself, and I would hope someone would do that for them if they were in that spot.”
The video shows MacRitchie — dressed in a T-shirt, sweats and boots — approaching the river embankment as the dog struggles to get out. He calls out to the dog at first and his wife, Erica, can be heard encouraging him to rescue it.
MacRitchie gingerly steps through the ice and into the river, audibly gasping as he wades about 20-feet toward the dog, which was on the other side of the frozen tributary of the Winooski River. His wife repeatedly shouts “c’mon” to the dog and exclaims “Oh, my God” as MacRitchie lifts the dog, later identified as Arizona, out of the water and onto the icy embankment. He carries it over to his wife.
“The only real stress I had about it wasn’t getting in the cold water. It was the depth. I did not know if it was 20 feet deep or it was 2 feet deep,” MacRitchie said. “When I broke through and I got on my feet and it was like waist high, I was actually relieved by that. In my mind, during the moment, I thought, OK this isn’t that bad. Yeah, it’s cold, but I feel this is a very doable situation.”
After retrieving the dog, MacRitchie called the dog’s owner, Morgan Cerasoli, whose number was listed on the dog tag.
Cerasoli said she had been looking for her dog, a seven-year-old mutt who had originally been rescued from the side of the road in South Carolina, since Thursday. She was heading to pick up her daughter from school, when she got the call from MacRitchie who said he had “pulled a drowning dog” out of the river.” He wanted to confirm it was her dog.
“I started crying, and I told him, oh, my God, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Let me pull a U-turn and I’m coming right back,” she said, as she sat besides Arizona during an interview. She said the dog has mostly recovered, though a checkup did find it was suffering from Lyme disease.
After reuniting with her dog, Cerasoli said she saw the video and was brought to tears again — over MacRitchie’s exploits as well as the poor condition of Arizona in that moment.
“It’s brave, it’s selfless, it’s commendable. It’s everything that I think that we were on this Earth to be,” she said of the rescue. “Sometimes it feels like that’s very rare these days.”