"What can Brown do for you?" For most people, the answer to that question asked by UPS is to deliver packages on time, but for one dog drowning in the cold waters of Bozeman, Montana, Brown did much more. UPS driver Ryan Arens went above and beyond the call of package delivery duty when he discovered a dog drowning.
During the Christmas holidays, Arens heard what sounded like the screams and cries of a dog in distress while delivering a package, USA Today reports. He finished the delivery and went searching for the source of the sound.
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He drove around the frozen pond to another house, where he was able to see Sadie, a 2.5-year-old Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, drowning in the frozen water. "I could see the dog trapped about 10-15 feet off of shore, with ice all around it," Arens told USA Today.
An older gentleman was in a rowboat on the ice trying to rescue Sadie without much success. Arens jumped right in to help. "I stripped to my boxers and got the guy out of the boat. Then, I slid the boat out onto the ice, using it to distribute my weight," Arens told USA Today. "I shimmed out to where the ice was thin."
Unfortunately, the ice gave way underneath Arens, and he plunged into the icy water with the dog. He swam the remaining distance, grabbed her collar and hoisted her onto the ice. "I don't know how I even did that," Arens said, "'cause I could not touch bottom at all. It's 16 feet deep."
KBZK reports that Arens took the soaked Sadie to a nearby house belonging to a retired veterinarian, Mike, who knew how to treat the nearly hypothermic dog. Arens and Mike put Sadie into a warm shower to gradually bring up her body temperature. Mike reportedly told Arens, "It's a good thing you did what you did when you did because another couple of degrees and she could have gone into cardiac arrest."
Arens is a consummate dog lover, owning a 14.5-year-old Malamute/Shepherd mix. He couldn't ignore the call of a dog in distress. After making sure Sadie was going to be okay, Arens finished his route, delivering his remaining 20 packages, Animal Channel reports.
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"What can Brown do for you?" For Sadie, it saved her life.