THUNDER BAY — A local man and his wife are struggling to get over a traumatizing experience that put his life at risk as he raced to save the couple's dog from drowning.
"I felt like I was going to lose my husband and my dog. My husband is very brave," Sandra Lazaruk said.
She spoke with TBnewswatch Monday about an incident that occurred Saturday afternoon near the Richardson grain terminal in Current River where she and Gordy Lazaruk had taken their two dogs for a walk.
The couple let the dogs off leash in a parking lot as it's an isolated area and they generally consider it safe to do so.
"We are very careful about letting our dogs off their leash," Lazaruk emphasized.
But when their pets spotted a flock of geese, they immediately broke away to chase the birds, which led them to the lake.
One of the dogs came back when it was called, but 15-month-old Lily continued the pursuit onto the broken ice and fell into the water past the end of the grain elevator.
Lazaruk said she was struggling in vain to make her way back toward shore.
"She was crying and screaming. It was terrible. We didn't know what to do. The people working on the Manitoulin [a nearby ship] were pointing to where she was but we could hardly see her."
At that point her husband could no longer resist the urge to put his own safety in grave jeopardy.
"Gordy couldn't stand listening to her cries anymore. He started out to get her, and that's when I called 911," Lazaruk said.
She estimates that it took her husband about four minutes to reach the dog.
"Once he got closer to her he had to jump from iceberg to iceberg because it was all broken up. And when he reached her he tried to make a noose out of the leash to pull her out. She was going down quick. The noose slipped off, it didn't make it around her neck. so he tried to bend down to try it again. Then the iceberg he was on tipped, and he fell into the water head-first. Right down. Right underneath."
Gordy initially had trouble pulling himself out of the frigid water.
With members of the ship's crew shouting at him from the deck to kick his feet, he was able to find a crevice in a large piece of ice and dragged himself to safety.
From there, Lazaruk said, he was able to pull the exhausted dog out of the water.
"She couldn't even stand up. She was frozen. He put his wet jacket around her. Then he had to get her to stand up, and they had to jump from iceberg to iceberg to get back to solid ice."
Firefighters and police arrived as they were approaching the shoreline, but Lazaruk said the first person on the scene was actually "a young kid who came off the Manitoulin. And he had two huge blankets, one for my dog and one for my husband. I don't know his name but he was like an angel."
Although the story had a happy ending she's well aware that a tragedy was barely averted.
"The 911 operator told us both not to go out there. I know that. We were born and raised in Northern Ontario. But when you hear your dog screaming and begging for you to come and get them, your love takes over."
Lazaruk said both she and her husband are still reliving the incident and have had trouble sleeping the past couple of nights.
"If I think about it too much it becomes overwhelming," she said. "We do not recommend anybody else do this. But I'm so glad my husband was brave enough to save my dog and save himself."
