On a cold night in early February, a woman risked her life to save her neighbor’s dog by jumping in a frozen pond.
It was Tuesday, Feb. 3 around 10:30 p.m., and Angie Bisset was getting ready for bed in her home in Holly Springs, when she heard dogs barking outside. She thought they were barking at coyotes in the area. But when she heard her own dog's persistent barking, she knew something was wrong.
Other WRAL Top Stories
She went to her front porch and heard a dog cry coming from the pond near her home. She ran down there to find her neighbor’s 1-year-old Great Pyrenees, Maggie, bobbing up and down in the pond, holding onto ice.
Bisset grabbed her phone and called 911. The 911 operator told her not to go into the pond, but Bisset said she couldn’t watch Maggie fight for her life and not do anything to help her.
Bisset explained to WRAL, “I said, 'I'm going to go in.' So, once I got over my head, I was breaking the ice with my arm. And once I got over my head, I kind of freaked out. I still couldn't reach her. So, I went back to the shore and started getting rocks.”
That’s when Bisset started throwing rocks in the pond to break the ice for Maggie.
Bisset said, “She (Maggie) was hanging on for dear life. The fire department finally got there, and I'm yelling at them, and I think it freaked Maggie out just enough to give her enough encouragement to break the last three feet of ice and swim to the shore.”
The Northwest Harnett Fire Department arrived and took Maggie and Bisset both to her house to warm up. Firefighters took an extra step and used a blow dryer to make Maggie warm quickly.
Bisset then called her neighbor, Maggie’s owner, Dan Wagstaff, who was at another home that night in Fuquay-Varina.
Wagstaff was speechless after Bisset told him the whole story.
“It’s like 20-some degrees, and she goes out there and the fire department's telling her not to go in the water, and she goes in the water anyway and starts breaking ice with her elbows."
He added, "She started losing feeling in her legs -- I bet she didn’t tell you that -- and that's why she was getting so tired. That’s why she came back to the shore.”
Wagstaff went on to say, “I don't know anybody that would sacrifice their life for another man's dog, but that's Angie. She's an animal lover. She's got plenty of animals of her own. And she always looks after ours when we're not there."
Frozen ponds pose danger during cold snap
WRAL News has reported on several instances of people falling into icy water during this recent cold snap.
In the Triangle, a man and his son are recovering after falling into a frozen pond Sunday off Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh.
On Feb. 1, a 10-year-old boy and his 59-year-old neighbor fell into a partially frozen pond in Cary after the man saw the boy fall in and ran outside to rescue him.
On Jan. 31, an 11-year-old child fell into the pond at Womble Park in Holly Springs after attempting to walk on the thin layer of ice that capped the water. The child is also expected to be okay.
NC officials warned about the dangers of walking on frozen bodies of water after three Texas brothers drowned after walking on a frozen pond during an ice storm in the state that gripped the southeast a week earlier.
