Illinois firefighters save exhausted 120-pound dog trapped in icy pond for 30 minutes

A 120-pound dog became trapped in an icy pond in a Chicago suburb — but was rescued in the nick of time by local firefighters before giving up or developing hypothermia.

“Unfortunately, I thought for a minute that I was going to just watch her just die in front of my eyes,” the dog’s owner Roseanne, who didn’t provide her last name, told CBS News- Chicago.

The 7-year-old Great Pyrenees named Belle fell into the partially frozen pond Friday morning and was treading water for roughly 30 minutes. She was near total exhaustion before Long Grove firefighters showed up and saved her, Roseanne said.

The pet owner said she was getting dressed in the morning while Belle was in the backyard when she suddenly heard frantic barking.

“I heard really high-pitched screaming. I thought, ‘Oh that doesn’t sound good.’ So I went to find her to see what was going on and that’s when I looked out the back window and I saw her treading water in the middle of the pond,” Roseanne told the news station.

“I freaked out. I started crying,” she added. “I started screaming to her ‘Belle! Belle! Keep your feet up on the ice because we’re going to get you out of there!’”

Roseanne tried to go into the pond to save her beloved pup herself but she struggled as the sandy bottom made it difficult to reach her.

“It’s all like quicksand there. You can’t walk in it,” she told CBS.

After the failed attempt, she called 911 and firefighters from the Long Grove Fire Department came with special gear and suits.

“When they pulled up, they could see the dog, on the ice and through the ice and was getting pretty tired. The dog actually had its paws sitting out on the shelf, waiting to get some help,” Lieutenant Khristine Mullen of the Long Grove Fire Protection District told the outlet.

With the winter temperatures and icy water, the firefighters had to work fast. Roxanne estimates that Belle was in the water for about a half hour already.

“Anytime that water, especially for dogs, gets around 50 degrees, it’s about 20 to 30 minutes is all they can handle, and then they’ve got all that wet fur afterward. You’re looking at hypothermia fairly quickly,” Mullen said.

Belle was safely brought to land and had no medical issues despite the frigid plunge.

Roseanne and her big pup visited the Long Grove firehouse on Monday to thank their heroes.

“If it wasn’t for the fireman and their skills and their compassion, she would have been a goner,” Roseanne said.