BOZEMAN – Most days you will find UPS driver Ryan Arens on his routine route — but one day just before Christmas, he came across something that made him pause.
“I was making a delivery just off 19th Street here, and I heard a dog just screaming bloody murder. It sounded like she was in a bad, bad place,” he said.
Arens was able to locate two-and-a-half-year-old Sadie, a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, out in a freezing pond, clinging to ice. Once he realized what was happening, he took action. He came across a gentleman who was in a rowboat but couldn’t reach her.
“So the boat stayed on the ice. I’m already in the water, I might as well swim,” Arens said. “So I swam out to Sadie, grabbed her collar, swam back to the ice, hoisted her up — I didn’t know how I even did that because I couldn’t touch the bottom. It’s sixteen feet deep.”
Arens says Sadie’s rescue was really a miraculous team effort.
“So I scooped up the dog, got her to Mike’s house — he’s a retired veterinarian — got her body temperature warmed up. He turned on the water, he was warming her up and used a thermometer,” he said.
Arens said the retired vet told him Sadie could have gone into cardiac arrest if her temperature had dropped any more, and that he saved her just in time.
The next day, Arens made a fateful delivery: “I had a delivery for the guy with the dog. He said ‘Hey, do you want to meet Sadie?’ I said I’d love to. He opened up the door and she came running up to me. We had a reuniting. It was pretty cool.”
Arens has been contacted by media outlets around the world. He just finished an interview with People.com and has been contacted by the Ellen Show.
Reporting by Patrice Parks for MTN News
