Rescues dog
A hound bound for duck yanked from an icy lake in Central Park
A good Samaritan prevented a determined duck-hunting hound from becoming a pupsicle after she fell into an icy Central Park Lake.
Svin Berg, 50, was walking 3-year-old Nutmeg off her leash about 8 a.m. on Jan. 28 near the Boathouse when the pooch made a beeline for a duck.
“She ran off after a duck onto the ice, she fell in the water and she couldn’t get out because the edge was icy,” said Berg’s wife, Olga.
As Nutmeg splashed in the water and a light snow fell, Aaron Pedroza, walking his dog Dipsea, saw the commotion and rushed to help.
“I was walking my dog and I see a dog on the lake,” Pedroza said, adding the pup was 25 to 30 feet from shore. “The lake’s frozen except there’s a strip of water going through it.”
When Nutmeg plunged into the freezing water, Pedroza jumped into action.
“At that point I started running around the lake to where you could access the water,” he said.
While about a dozen people gathered on the shore, somebody grabbed the nearest safety ladder, Pedroza recounted.
“It looked at that point like the dog was in distress,” Pedroza said. “I’m not sure how long a dog can survive in water like that. I decided to go on the ice. Basically, I assumed the ice would crack, but I hoped it wouldn’t.”
Pedroza set out on his hands and knees, using the ladder to disperse his weight.
“The dog was coming toward me,” he said. “I reached out, the ice cracks, I fall in the water with the ladder.”
Pedroza used it to climb back up on some still-intact ice — but it collapsed again.
“I grabbed the dog with my left hand and with my right hand I was still holding the ladder. I throw the dog up onto the ice. She scampers to shore,” he said. “It was in the teens, and I think that was actually helpful because I had on my biggest jacket, boots.”
Afterward, Nutmeg’s grateful owner had to call Pedroza’s wife for him. “I can’t dial my wife because my fingers don’t have any blood; the phone won’t respond to my fingers,” Pedroza recalled.
“I’m glad Aaron was there, what a wonderful person,” said Olga Berg. “It was just miraculous.”
“She was shivering, she had a rapid heartbeat,” she said of Nutmeg. “We dried her with a hair dryer.”
“She slept on the sheepskin for like seven hours. She was stressed.”
Berg took photos of Nutmeg and her savior together, praising “that look of gratitude. She really knew he rescued her.”
But for now, Nutmeg’s offleash adventures are forbidden.
“She loses her mind sometimes with ducks and squirrels, she’s very much a huntress,” Berg said.