When you live up north, where the winters are really cold, one of the best times of the year is the day when you feel spring coming. That first hint of warmer temperatures.
With the time change, there’s longer sunlight at the end of each day, the birds start chirping, and everyone starts thinking about what they’re going to do with this warmer weather.
And the lakes that have been frozen over solid for a few months? That ice starts to melt. And there’s a danger in walking out on the ice, because you can’t always tell if your next step will be the one where your foot goes right through. And then you’re in ice-cold water – and it’s not that easy to get out on your own.
My guest today is Maggie. She lives on a big lake, and one day recently when the ice was getting thin, she was thrown into a situation where she had to do an ice rescue.
And within minutes, Maggie herself needed to be rescued.
If you want to contact Maggie –
Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/margaret.g.anderson/
https://www.facebook.com/MGAnderson321/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMaggieGAnderson
https://twitter.com/MaggieGAnderson
And the socks that kept her feet safe – Bridgedale Socks – https://www.bridgedale.com/
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/219
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
When you live up north, where the winters are really cold, one of the best times of the year is the day when you feel spring coming. That first hint of warmer temperatures.
With the time change, there’s longer sunlight at the end of each day, the birds start chirping, and everyone starts thinking about what they’re going to do with this warmer weather.
And the lakes that have been frozen over solid for a few months? That ice starts to melt. And there’s a danger in walking out on the ice, because you can’t always tell if your next step will be the one where your foot goes right through. And then you’re in ice-cold water – and it’s not that easy to get out on your own.
My guest today is Maggie. She lives on a big lake, and one day recently when the ice was getting thin, she was thrown into a situation where she had to do an ice rescue.
And within minutes, Maggie herself needed to be rescued.
Scott
First off, tell us about your dogs. You have three dogs. Can you just give us a quick overview of who they are?
Maggie
Sure. My first dog is Wyatt. He is 10 years old, and he is the only one I got as a baby. He is an English Retriever Doodle mix and he is about 85 pounds. My next oldest is Beni. He is a poodle. He’s 75 pounds. I got him when he was 5 years old, so he’s 6 years old now, like, a little over a year ago. My youngest one is Josie. She’s about 60 pounds. She’s a classic Goldendoodle. I got her when she was about 1 year old and she’s also 6 years old now. She’s just a couple of months younger than Beni, and she’s the youngest and the only girl, but she’s in charge of the two big boys.
Scott
And are they related at all?
Maggie
No, they’re all totally separate. Josie came from the East Coast somewhere. I don’t even have her origin story. And I got Wyatt as a baby a long time ago from a breeder in the western suburbs of Chicago. And Beni, I’m not really sure where he came from. He came from the shelter at 5 years old – I don’t know.
Scott
Okay. And how you ended up with these dogs– as part of the backstory, can you give us a quick summary of what happened and how you ended up where you are right now?
Maggie
How I ended up as a single lady with three dogs– it’s in September 2023. I suddenly found out that my husband had a girlfriend for a very long time, so my first thought was like, “You go find a hotel and I get the dogs.” Absolutely, that was all it was on my mind. The next week, I told him to get a mover and he asked me which half of the stuff he should take, and I said, “I don’t care, but leave the dog stuff and leave Wyatt’s favorite rug.”
Over the course of 2024 and subpoenas, I found out that I was in more debt than I ever knew. There were secret credit cards. There was trading on cryptocurrency platforms, and the lawyer fees were overwhelming. So, very quickly, I saw a huge debt. So I called up my mom and dad who are awesome, and I said, “Hey, could I go live in your spare lake house?” Which is next door to their retirement lake house. “Could I please just go live there for free for a while?” And they said, “That would be awesome. That would be great. We’d love to have you.” So I moved in January 2025 up to my parents’ spare lake house next door with my three dogs.
Scott
So you’re in one house, they’re in the other house. How far apart are these two places?
Maggie
I would say, like, a couple of hundred yards.
Scott
And you had already been coming to this lake house your whole life, right? So you were familiar with it?
Maggie
Yes. My whole life and my mom’s whole life. The property was bought by my great-grandfather. I’m living in the house that was constructed by my grandparents for their retirement around 1970 or so, I think. But yeah, I’ve come here. My mom was a teacher. I was here in June, July, and August. I was here during spring break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Labor Day, Memorial Day, you get the idea, which is a lot – my whole life. It’s a second home, more than a vacation home.
Scott
I know this just happened recently, and we’ll talk about that. 2025 was the first time you were there for the spring thaw. What happens in the spring thaw? Can you just describe that?
Maggie
Yeah. Usually, I’m up here for winter break, and it’s all, like, snowmobiling and winter sports, and then I’m usually not up again. It’s usually the longest break until Memorial Day weekend and you put everything in the water. But what happens in between is you go from the state– January, February, it was so cold – like negative 20 every day for weeks, and there were trucks driving out on the lake. That’s what I got to see living out here with my desk pointing towards the window – pickup trucks driving all over. They even put roads across the lakes up here even with signage and stuff during the winter and there’s, like, ice house villages and stuff. They’re there every day and then, all of a sudden, one day, they’re not. This year, that happened in either very early April or the end of March. The truck stops going up there, and it usually takes about– well, this year, it was about three weeks. My dad says he thinks it’s usually more, like, two weeks. It all depends on the weather. If it’s really windy and the waves bash against the ice, within two weeks, you can go from trucks driving around on the lake to boats driving around the lake fishing. It’s a pretty sudden change.
Scott
And do your dogs typically go out on the ice in the winter?
Maggie
No. They’ve never been interested. I don’t know if it’s like some kind of natural thing where they don’t want to go out there or there’s nothing to draw their attention to a big blankness. I mean, at least in January, February, March, we would go down to the lake and I would take pictures of the sunset, walk around, or something like that, but they never went more than a few feet from shore. It was always fine. I think, at one point, my dad went cross-country skiing out on the lake, and he tried to get the dogs to come with and they actually didn’t want to go with him. When the lake started to melt, same thing. They were staying along the shore, and I felt really comfortable that they had no interest in going out there – they just never did for months.
Scott
Okay. The day this happened was April of this year, 2025, and it’s in the afternoon. You got a notification. What was that? Just take us through what happened.
Maggie
Yes. It was April 10th. It was about 4:30 PM, so I was close to finishing up work. There was, like, one more thing I was going to do and my dog, Wyatt, the oldest one, was inside with me, and the two youngsters were outside wandering around – that’s Josie and Beni. And Josie has a GPS collar, so does Wyatt. Those two, I learned after coming up here in January, were my wanderers. Wyatt, in particular, discovered that there were a lot of dead deer in the woods from hunting season – things you learn when you move to the North woods. For the first time, you go through that. I put GPS trackers on them, and I have an app, and I can track where they go, and I can set up a virtual fence of the boundary of where they’re allowed to be. Then, my phone does a little beep if somebody goes outside the virtual fence.
At 4:30 PM, my phone kind of beeped, and I’ll say this, like, “Oh my gosh.” I do not always notice my phone beeping because it also beeps for emails and texts, but thank goodness I did look over because I was used to checking my GPS for the dogs, and it said, “Josie has left the virtual fence.” I was like, “Oh man.” When I looked at the map, she had left the virtual fence out onto the lake because I have, like, an aerial photograph kind of map, like a satellite image. She had disappeared out of the fence, but I could see her, and it looked like she was out on the lake. This is the first time in months of having this – that’s where she went. She used to always go from one side to the other side of my property. I knew all the specific places she liked to go, and this was the first time she’s out on the lake, and I immediately already was not liking that. I was like, “Why is this happening?”
Obviously, I don’t want her on the lake and, of course, I’m very well aware that the lake is mostly melted at this point on April 10th. So, I was already nervous and I went out on my deck. I’m up on a hill overlooking the lake, and I start calling and – it takes a second – then she starts coming. You’d think I would just a hundred percent be relieved, but Beni does not have a collar because he is more obedient and he is just her shadow. She’s the dominant one and he’s her shadow. So he’s always wherever she is. But as the more obedient dog, he always gets to me first and he’s faster. He’s built like a racehorse. He’s got these long, skinny legs. So the fact that she was coming to me first, I just had this sinking panicky feeling because I knew, if her tracker’s out in the lake, then that means he was out in the lake and he didn’t come.
So that’s when – my cell phone was on my desk and I didn’t even grab that – I closed the door, locking Wyatt inside, and just started running down the hill. About halfway down, I started saying to Josie like, “Where’s Beni? Where’s Beni?” As if she’s going to answer me or show me. About halfway down the hill, the trees had cleared out of my way enough – there’s all these pine trees in the way, so I couldn’t see the lake – I just see– my voice and my hands are shaking already just like reliving this. I could see Beni splashing around in a hole in the lake, and it’s just the worst thing that you never want to see.
Scott
How far offshore was Beni?
Maggie
He was about 200 feet offshore. At that time, in front of our house, the ice was maybe 250 feet extending from shore. So, he was about 50 feet shy of open water – a couple hundred feet from shore. We’re kind of in, like, a little bay. The rest of the lake was open. Like, we were the last chunk of ice. The previous four or five days, we’d been saying that if a breeze would just kick off, this would be gone in a day, but it was just calm. It was just so close to not being there anymore. Right.
Scott
Right. But man, just going down the hill and seeing Beni out there in the water– I would’ve just been so sick and panicky.
Maggie
Yes. The first feeling was just like, “This is not happening. My worst nightmare is not happening,” but it is, of course. So I had that sick feeling and it lasted really only for, like, a few heartbeats, I would say – the sick dropping feeling. Then, I would say, I just went into this, like, emergency solve mode for quite a while. I can’t think of other times in my life where something has happened, but I feel like I’ve heard from other people that you don’t even know the mental state you’re going to go into when something like this happens. Immediately, I was just like, “I’ll fix it.”
Scott
Right, because you’re a mom and this is your baby.
Maggie
Yes, absolutely.
Scott
So what did you do first?
Maggie
Well, I ran down the hill yelling, “I’m coming! Mommy’s coming!” kind of thing. I got to shore and I immediately just started going like a checklist through my clothes. I was wearing a really baggy sweatshirt. I was like, “Sweatshirt? No. Too baggy.” And I took it off. I was literally thinking, “What am I going to swim in the lake with?” Because I already decided in an instant – that didn’t involve thinking – that I was going to be in that water because of how far out it was and how thin that water is – 50 feet from open water. So I knew I was going in, so I was like, “I don’t want to swim with a big baggy hoodie.”
Scott
Do you know what the air temperature was that day? What would you estimate the water temperature to be? Do you know?
Maggie
I think my mom said she wishes we would have checked the water temp somehow. I think we just googled, like, “What temperature is a frozen lake?” And I can’t even remember.
Scott
Okay, that’s fine. But what was the temperature outside though? How cold was it?
Maggie
The air was decent. I would say, like, mid-50s, which is actually what it is – it’s been the last week actually. Mid-50s in that time of year is really nice actually. It was probably 55. I remember that I was wearing a sweatshirt outside. I wasn’t wearing a coat. I was just wearing a sweatshirt and it was comfortable.
Scott
So not frigid cold like you would be in the middle of the winter. But the water’s still going to be really cold though.
Maggie
Yes, because it’d just been frozen not that long– well, I’ve actually taken some limnology and it’s interesting about the stratification of the lake layers and how it can change drastically depending on the weather at the time the lake freezes. It makes a big difference on the temperature of the water when the lake thaws because, once it freezes over, it actually stays the same all winter long. I don’t know if this was a year where the lake was colder or warmer than average. I was just like, “Hoodie? No. It’s too baggy. I can’t swim in a hoodie. T-shirt? Yeah. I at least want to wear a T-shirt crawling out there. Pants?” I was actually wearing baggy blue jeans which is my biggest regret. They had really stylish holes in them.
Great. So I had hole-y knees. I was like, “Okay, probably not the best thing for swimming in, but I can’t imagine crawling across the ice without them on.” For me, that was my most iffy thing. Do I want to be swimming in baggy blue jeans? But I kept them on. I took my shoes off and I said, “But keep the socks.” Thank goodness, I had very thick woolly socks on and I chose to keep them on, and I had no idea what a good choice that was. That was, I think, probably a pretty obvious choice to keep them on, but I didn’t know how helpful that was going to be.
Scott
Well, you were making split-second, unexpected last-minute decisions here.
Maggie
Like throwing off my sweatshirt and my shoes and thinking through this was probably like 1/1000, 2/1000 and boom. Then, I started running out towards the water towards the lake. Then, I thought maybe I should pop over next door and let my parents know. By the way, I hadn’t mentioned this. My parents are retired. They travel about six months of the year. They go all over the world and they had just gotten back from a trip the night before. If this had happened the day before or the day before, or the day before, I would’ve been alone with nobody anywhere nearby. I’m in the middle of nowhere. So thankfully, I thought that I probably should tell them.
Scott
Yeah, but that must have been a difficult decision. Your dog is splashing around in the water and you’re going to run away from him to let your parents know.
Maggie
It was harder. It was a lot harder than figuring out what to keep on or keep off or whatever. I didn’t have any concept of how long he could last, how awkward it was for him to swim in a place like that. It’s one thing to see your dog swimming around in the lake the summer before – which was my first summer with him – and it’s another thing to see him splashing around in a little hole because I was like, “What if he sinks down and gets under the ice?” I’m just thinking I might not literally see him again. He might die while I run next door. It was just like, “Yes? No? Yes? No?” And I was like, “I should tell them. I don’t know what to do. I should just quickly tell them.”
So I tore off through the woods with my socks on, and then I was like, “Oh man, I don’t even have shoes on.” But I tore off through the woods in my socks, yelling the whole way, hoping they would just come out, but they didn’t hear me, so I ended up running all the way to their door, ripping the door open. My mom was in the living room and I just yelled, “Beni’s gone in. I’m going after him.” And she’s “What?” Of course, it’s too weird and sudden. And I was like, “Beni’s gone in. I’m going out.” I don’t even know if I said, “Gone in through the ice.” But I felt it was obvious. The third time I yelled, I thought, and she said, “What?” I just left. I think it’ll sink in or something. I didn’t see my dad. At the time, I just assumed she would tell him wherever he was. I would later talk to my mom and learn that my dad was on a work call. He’s only mostly retired, so he still does lawyer stuff and he told his client that he thinks something might be going on with a dog and that he’ll be back in 5 minutes. He’ll call him back in 5 minutes, which definitely did not happen.
Scott
Okay, so did your mom finally comprehend what was happening?
Maggie
I think she must have comprehended right away because she told me later that she was right behind me, that she was basically on my heels running out the door. I had no idea. I didn’t know that. I was definitely – I’ll say this – in a very single-minded “save Beni” mode with not as much thinking going on as maybe you would hope. I don’t know. I guess I’m second-guessing myself now – some of my logic – but that’s only because I’m processing later about what I should have done to be better. So as I was running out the door– oh, well, this is evidence. My mom totally got what I was saying. As I was running out the door, the third time she said “What?”, she yelled, “Grab a rope!” So she must have obviously caught on. For her, it was too shocking too.
So she yelled, “Grab a rope.” Thank goodness, she did. It never had occurred to me on the shore that I was just going to crawl out there. That was what I was going to do after I took my sweatshirt off and shoes. I’m like, oh, rope, seems like a thing. Okay. There’s a little boathouse down by the shore in front of my house, so I ran to it thinking, “Oh my gosh, is it going to be locked?” Because I knew there was a lock on it and it was, like, iffy whether or not it would actually be closed. The lock was not latched closed, so I could pop it off. I looked inside assuming I’m going to see either a ski rope or a tube tow rope or something, and it actually took me a long time. Finally, I found one coiled in a corner and I’m like, “Oh, thank God.” So I grabbed it, ran to the shore, and yelled, “Beni, I’m coming! Mom’s coming!”
I start uncoiling the rope and it falls into pieces. I started uncoiling again, and the rope fell into more little pieces. I had, like, an 8-foot chunk, a 10-foot chunk, and I’m like, “What the heck is happening with this rope?” I finally found two long-ish chunks. They weren’t crazy long – maybe a 20-foot segment and a 30-foot segment or something. I tied them together. There were a bunch of other small segments. I’m like, what the heck is this rope? I don’t know. I tied the two longest segments together. Then I was like, “I don’t have time for this, for putting rope together. I’m just going to go with this short rope and I’ll see what that means.”
My mom started yelling apparently, like, “Your rope’s too short!” In my mind, I was like, “Well, the rope is short. It’s the only rope I found.” I didn’t know where our good ropes were. What I found out later from my parents is, like, an old retired ski rope that they use to tie down tarps over kayaks and other lake equipment in the winter. So they were just kind of like scrap rope. Where our good ski ropes are probably over in the garage at my parents’ place or maybe even in the back of our ski boat, which is in storage.
Scott
You didn’t have time to go looking for that though.
Maggie
No. I felt like I had no time. I felt that, at any moment, he could sink and be gone. So I grabbed my very short, tied-together rope chunks and I seriously just dove onto the ice and just started army crawling out there as fast as I could. I definitely knew that I should spread my weight out as much as possible. Like I said, I was planning to go in because Beni’s a big boy, but he’s 75 pounds. That’s a lot less than me. And he has four legs and he got out that far. So in my mind, I’ve got to be really careful or I’m going to fall in halfway to him. That’s not helpful.
As I got closer to him, it was really creepy. The ice went to just slush and I think it was almost like a waterbed. It didn’t even feel hard anymore. It was this horrible, soft slush. So I went to even less than Army crawl because I was just trying to get to him. Of course, the whole way, I’m chanting, “Mommy’s coming. Mommy’s coming. It’s okay. It’s okay. Mommy’s coming.” I’m flat on my belly flat. I’m just kind of paddling with my hands and feet just trying to see if I can get all the way to him on this slushy soft surface. Right when I got to where I could reach towards his neck, towards his collar, I didn’t even give anything that was really even like a pull, I just plopped in right when I got next to him – my entire body from my toes to my head just went in. The ice just gave way. I was just in, in a split second.
Scott
How deep is the water right there?
Maggie
Well, I definitely knew well above my head. You’d think a lake would be really deep, but I think the deepest part of the entire lake is 40 feet. I mean, all you need is for it to be over your head.
Scott
Right. You got to swim. You can’t just walk back or whatever.
Maggie
Yes. Was Beni panicking?
Scott
I mean, now, you’re both in the water. What do you do now?
Maggie
I wouldn’t say that Beni looked like he was panicking in any way other than just he was swimming. I don’t recall seeing that his eyes looked crazy or anything like that. I’m not sure if he would act differently if he was just trying to climb up on the side of the pier and I would be like, “What are you doing in the middle of the summer? Go to shore, weirdo.” He was just right paw, left paw, right paw, left paw. He was just treading water pretty routinely.
I was panicking. I was the one like, “Mommy’s coming. No worries, Beni. Going to get you out.” I’ll say at this point too, like, I wasn’t scared. I guess I’ll say I was panicking in a weird way, but I wasn’t worried. After those first two seconds of seeing him in there, my brain went to, “I’ll fix it.” It’s just a matter of me helping him out. I never considered that it wouldn’t be okay. When I plopped in, it was just like, “Oh, well this is happening. I knew this was going to happen. Okay. That’s weird. I’m not cold.” It was just these super logical things like, “Okay, I’m in as expected. It’s weird. I’m not cold. I thought I would be cold, but I’m not.” And then it was like, “Okay, got to get them out.”
Scott
You said as you ran toward the lake, your mom was kind of right on your heels. What’s she doing at this point?
Maggie
Well, I can tell you this. I never saw her. I never saw her through this whole thing with my eyes because I was so single-mindedly focused on saving Beni. My understanding from what I heard later was that my dad didn’t come out right away because he didn’t quite understand what my mom had said at first. It was a little bit later that he decided to go check it out and got off his work call. So she decided to tie a bunch of extra rope chunks together, and then she started Army crawling out after me. My 70-some year old mother crossed the ice– she was going to go attach her rope to mine. She got all the rope chunks, tied it together, made a longer, better rope, and then started calling out after me.
Scott
I wanted to hear what your mom had to say. So let’s hear from Marge, what her thoughts are right now.
Marge
I had many thoughts going on in my head when I saw Maggie crawling out on the ice towards Beni. She has a rope, but it’s not connected to anything and that won’t help. I thought, “Where is my phone?” I was thinking that I wanted to take a picture, and then I was thinking, “Well, that’s really stupid. She’s out on the ice and Beni’s in the water.” But I also thought, “Man, I need my phone. I should call for help.” And then I kept thinking about how help was really far away and that I needed to help her. Then, I was wondering where Mark was, and then I thought, “Well, should I get the kayak?” But mostly, I think I just felt helpless and I wanted her to stop, but she was so focused on Beni. She just couldn’t hear a word I said.
Scott
I just thought it was funny that your mom thought about taking a picture during this time.
Maggie
Yeah, I heard about that not too long afterwards, but yeah. She said, “I don’t know how we’re trained to be in this world but, when you’re out there, I was thinking like, oh, I should take a picture.” I mean, I have no doubt she was thinking about the rest of my family. We have a really close family and we talk to each other every day, all day long on WhatsApp. We have a family WhatsApp group and we share pictures and we tell everybody and the whole family what we’re all doing all the time. So for her, it was instinctual. The family wants to know what’s going on. I should take a picture to share on WhatsApp. It makes sense. That’s what she was thinking. But then she was like, “Okay, I should not be doing this right now. Maybe I should be focusing on the mission here.”
Scott
Deal with the emergency, yeah. What sensation did you feel when you went into that freezing water?
Maggie
I think one of the stranger things is that I was expecting it to be really cold. I was expecting it to be shockingly cold, and it wasn’t. I have been in the lake maybe, like, a couple few weeks after it finishes thawing. I did it this year too, actually. It’s really cold. It’s very hard to get in. You have to work up to it, and it feels really cold. I don’t know if it was just that much colder because I was in this, like, ice cube water situation or if it was the sudden dunking, but it didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel cold the entire time I was there. I felt totally fine.
The first thing I tried to do was just grab his butt with one hand because his two paws were like splashing right on the edge of the ice. His two front paws were up on the edge, so I needed to get his butt up. But the problem was I was gripping on the edge of the ice near him, and it was just breaking off. I had no leverage. I’m trying to pull on ice to push him but, the second I pull on the ice, it breaks.
So then, I was suddenly remembering these videos I’d seen shared on Facebook – I don’t know if it’s just my algorithm to see dog stuff, but I’ve seen so many videos shared on Facebook randomly of people going out to dogs but, usually, this is more like dogs that are 20 feet out or something – and people just smash through the ice and like make a trail. So I was like, I can just smash a trail to shore. So I started just banging my forearms, hands, elbows, just using my arms like hammers, and just started hammering down the ice, and it started breaking. And I was like, “Okay, I’ll just make a path.” Well, it was 200 feet. After a lot of hammering, it’s like, “Okay, that was three feet.” So then I was like, “Okay… As I get closer to shore, it’s going to only get harder to break.” Very quickly, I was like, I don’t think this is going to work.
But then I thought, “Hold on a second. We’re, like, 50 feet from open water. Those last 20 feet of ice might just be floating slush. It didn’t look very substantial. That’s maybe 30 feet of thinner ice to break and then we could be in open water.” I’d been paying attention for the last several days expecting the lake to clear out soon, which I was monitoring just because I wanted my pier in the water. I want my pontoon in the water, so I’ve been waiting for it to open. I did notice that if you just go to the end of the next property down, which is my great-aunt Betty’s property– we actually have my great-grandfather’s other chunk of property on my one side. If you went past their property, there’s open water that way. I was estimating it was maybe a 15-minute swim, at least in normal summer conditions. So I was like, “Okay, I can bust this out to open water.” And then 15 minutes later, boom, Beni and I can swim to shore where the ice isn’t.
So I just started yelling at my mom, even though I hadn’t really seen her yet. I wasn’t focusing on her. I was just like, “I’m just going to break a path.” And I just started hammering down the ice like a crazy woman, and I did. I broke the trail all the way out to open water, and I said, “We’re going to swim.” I do kind of vaguely remember– my mom has definitely reminded me that she told me, “You won’t make it.” And I said, “Yes, I will,” because I felt so strong. I’m a good swimmer. And after all, I wasn’t cold. Also, I would later really come to feel it. My brain was getting dumber very fast. I was definitely not thinking very well after a couple of minutes.
Scott
Right. Being in the freezing cold water has that effect. But you weren’t aware that it was having that effect.
Maggie
Right. It had been at least five minutes of me banging around in the ice and another couple minutes before that army crawling out on the ice to the spot. My mom was like, “You won’t make it. You won’t make it”. I was like, “Yes, I will. It’s plan B.” I remember saying, “Plan B is I’ll swim. I’ll swim to Aunt Betty’s, no problem, but I’ll come back and try one more time.” So after I finished breaking the path out to open water, I turned around and swam. It was some kind of Titanic scene. It was just floating ice trunks everywhere. I’m just swimming through ice trunks and it’s just one of those weird situations that I’d never done before with all of my lake experience. For now, 4+ decades of my life, I’ve never swam through ice trunks.
I swam through the ice water back to Beni and I was like, “All right, I’m going to give one last try, and then we’re going to swim.” My mom’s yelling, “No, you’re not!” I’m like, “Yes, it’s fine.” I thought it was a fine plan. I was really confident about it. But then I was like, okay, but what do I do? I still have that problem with the ice breaking when I pull on it, so I was like, “Okay, I can’t pull on the ice. I have to push up Beni’s butt.” I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve always been impressed with synchronized swimmers in the Olympics and the powerful way they can get so far out of the water. It’s incredible. I’ve always felt like I’m a good treader, and I’ve been in the lake June, July, and August my entire life. I’m just a lake person and I was like, “I’m a strong swimmer. I work out. I’m going to just channel my inner Olympic synchronized swimmer moves and I’m going to just push him out.” So I just swiveled my legs as hard as I could. I remember my blue jeans flapping around and I don’t know if this is adding to my churning power or taking away from it. I did have that thought of like, “Are these flapping jeans helping or hurting?”
I grabbed his butt and I pushed up, which for the first time now, I pushed. My head goes under. I pushed him up, which pushed me down a couple feet down into the water. I had enough time in a split second to think, “Oh my gosh, I really hope I’d come up in that hole and not under the ice because, to me, I think that’s the creepiest thing.
Scott
That is a weird thought for sure, yeah.
Maggie
Yes. And I thankfully popped right back up on the edge where I could grab the edge of the ice. Honestly, I was shocked too. When I opened my eyes, Beni was halfway to shore already. I didn’t even realize that his butt had lifted off my hands. I thought I had just sunk so deep underwater, I wasn’t touching his butt anymore. My mom said that he popped up really fast. I just swiveled and pushed and apparently just popped his butt out, and he got out and then he wanted to come back. He turned around to come save me – sweet boy – but my mom just tore into him, just yelled so firmly at him to stay, to come to shore and stay. I yelled at those dogs because Josie wanted to come help too. Josie was onshore with my mom and she was yelling at both of them to the point where those poor kids were traumatized because grandma never talks to them that way. But I was just like, oh my gosh. Could you imagine if one of them came back and fell in somewhere?
Scott
Just as an aside, where was Wyatt all this time?
Maggie
Up by my desk. He missed the whole thing. He’s the only one that missed the whole thing. He was up by my computer and I was thinking later, like, thank goodness I left and closed the door behind me so that he was not a part of this adventure at all.
Scott
Okay. So now, how do you get yourself out of the water? What are your thoughts at this point?
Maggie
Yeah, my first thought was I have no idea if I can get myself out or not. It’s not something I’d ever practiced before, so I don’t know. I reached up onto the ice and the first thing that my hand finds is a slushy dog footprints – Beni’s footprint. The ice gave me a little handle. So I think, normally, the biggest problem you have is, when you’re reaching on top of the ice and moving your hands around, it’s nothing but slippery flatness. You can’t grab anything. So I was just lucky there was a paw print. If I was just ice skating around in the lake and fell through a thin chunk or something, there might be nothing but flat, slick ice and then how are you supposed to pull yourself onto the ice? But I had a slushy dog print that had definitely sunk into the slush, and so I pulled on it and then, just sort of instinctually, I knew I had to kind of get flat into that army crawling position again. So I kicked my legs up so that they were up close to the surface and I slid my right leg onto the ice. Then, I pulled with my hand and boom, I was out on the ice. I had one leg on the ice, two arms on the ice. It all kind of happened at once. This whole time, I was holding my short stupid rope and right around this time it went from slack to taut because I looked up and I saw my dad for the first time. He had crawled out with a log–
Scott
Oh, so he was out on the ice too?
Maggie
This is the first time I noticed though. I had literally not seen him. Also, when I grabbed that dog print, that was the first time I noticed that my hands were covered in blood – my hands, my arms. I was like, “Huh? When did that happen?” It was a mess. And then, yes, I saw my dad for the first time and he was probably more than halfway out towards me tying my rope not that far away because I had a really short, stupid rope.
Scott
But your dad also had a log? Where did that come from?
Maggie
Yes. Well, when he came out and saw my mom crawling out there, he was like, “Stop, I’m going out. You’re not going out.” He sent my mom back to shore and then he just kind of went into the woods by the shore and grabbed a log because he knew that you have to spread your weight out. So, my mom had said, she briefly thought like, “I should go get my kayak,” which was over back by her house. She actually had one kayak that was not wrapped in a tarp over there that I think she had used late fall. We have – I don’t know – half a dozen kayaks, but only one of them was not tarped up. So she thought of that, which I also think is a good idea. But my dad was like, “I’ll get a log.” And I think that was a good idea. So he put his hands on the log and then crawled out and tied the chunk of ropes my mom had tied together to my chunk.
Scott
Okay. So, he was close enough to get to the rope that you had?
Maggie
Yes. He was close. He was probably, like, three quarters of the way out towards the hole. So he was probably at least 150 feet out there and he was tying my short stupid rope to the longer chunk of rope that my mom had made. That was the first time I had seen him. As soon as he tied that, my mom’s got the other end on shore– right as I was pulling myself out with the dog print, I noticed my rope went taut. I was just holding a limp rope the whole time and I was like, “What?” So I kind of look up and I’m like, “Oh, there’s dad, there’s a rope.” I didn’t even know at that point that my mom was tying more rope. I wasn’t paying attention to anything. I didn’t even realize my dad was there and out in the lake. The rope’s taut.
Right around this time too, as I was about to arm crawl, I’m not functioning very well. My arms and legs suddenly– I still wasn’t cold, but I couldn’t move very well. I was also kind of chanting either out loud or in my head, “My brain is dumb. My brain is dumb.” I definitely had this chanting mantra thing going, letting myself know that my brain is dumb. I felt really weird. My mom, I remember at this point, was yelling something – to this day, I don’t know because she doesn’t remember, but I kind of knew it was English, but it didn’t make sense. None of her words could make sense to me anymore. I did know she was pulling me with a rope. So I let her kind of pull me and that made the army crawling go a lot faster and easier. It was very uncomfortable dragging across my stomach, across the ice, and my arms were very awkward. Thankfully, even with my brain being dumb, I spun onto my back and started kicking with my heels, and I started sliding really fast. My mom’s really strong. She does weightlifting almost every single day now. I feel like I’m shortchanging her. I think it’s every day. But she alternates between heavyweights and lightweights and she does high rep, low weights on some days, and then she does low rep, high weights on other days. So she is pulling me lightning fast towards shore, and I’m immediately about to pass my dad, like 50 feet goes by in two seconds because my mom’s hauling me in.
I do remember at least understanding my dad’s words where he says, “Stay away from me.” And that kind of got through. I was getting pulled right towards him and we don’t want two people in one place. So I kicked my feet sideways, and I passed him at least a body length to the side. Then, I was, like, 20 feet past him closer to shore, and I’m laying on my back with my arms stretched behind me. So I’m kind of looking out towards him and I see – one knee go through, second knee go through – in like a flash, in one second, he’s down to his chest in the lake and he’s holding onto that log. That log didn’t go through. I mean, it was a very smart log. The log was, like, five feet. When I say a log, don’t picture a super heavy 18-inch diameter thing. It was more like a 6-inch diameter, 5 or 6 foot long thing, distributing the weight from his hand. His arms were holding onto that log on top of the ice and he was mid-chest in the water.
Scott
I also wanted to hear from your dad what his thoughts were as he went through the ice. So let’s hear from Mark.
Mark
As I was crawling back to shore, I felt my knees and feet break through the ice. It seemed like slow motion. I thought, “Here I go” as my hips and then my waist went down too. My arms and shoulders stayed on the lake ice, so I was never actually swimming. I was concerned that if I struggled too much, the ice I was still using for support would break away too. I was actually kind of surprised that I hadn’t gone through earlier. After all, of Maggie, the dogs and me, I was clearly the heaviest. But I was never scared for myself. My daughter had already gotten out of the ice and was making her way back to shore. My only concern was for her as a strong swimmer. I was confident that I wouldn’t panic, at least not yet, and I knew I was not alone. Marge and Maggie were close by, so I thought this is just one more obstacle to overcome for this unfortunate adventure.
As I was wondering how I would get out, my concern was still for Maggie because I didn’t know how long she’d been in the water. I knew it was longer than me because she was already in the lake by the time I got down to the shore, but I didn’t know how long and I didn’t like the way she was talking. As a dad, I can honestly say that my thoughts were more about Maggie than myself as I went down into that cold water.
Maggie
That was the first time since I’d been in the water that I was actually worried because, this whole time, I was just this confident I’m going to save Beni and I can’t contemplate any other alternative than that. But him falling through was just like me seeing Beni that first time from halfway up the hill. It was this sudden, “Oh no, this can’t be happening. It’s happening again, but it’s worse because it’s my dad now.” And in a second or two, I was like, “Oh my gosh. He’s either going to just sink and drown in the ice, or he is going to have a heart attack.” Immediately, I was just like, “It’s all my fault. This is all my fault. I know I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t know if my family will ever forgive me.” It’s amazing what can go through your head in, like, one or two seconds.
Scott
Yeah. Such a short period of time. And you went immediately to all of the guilt.
Maggie
I felt so much guilt. I even went all the way back to the only reason why I’m here is because I chose a stupid husband and had a stupid marriage, like a stupid idiot. That’s why I’m in huge debt and that’s why I’m up here and my whole family will know that this all happened because I’m a big, stupid idiot who destroyed my life and killed my dad. That’s what’s going through my head. This worst case disaster guilt of I’m a stupid, horrible dummy who got my dad killed. But that all happened during, like, one second.
I rolled over and I started army crawling back towards my dad immediately. I don’t remember if my mom said anything or if anybody said anything but, in no time, I army crawled right back to my dad. I suddenly was able to move again. Remember when I first pulled myself out, I was like, “Oh, I’m not functioning very well.” Well, suddenly, I could army crawl again. I just told myself, “Oh, well, here I go. I’m going to go in again because I didn’t think I could go right up to the edge of my dad and not fall in. I was like, well, when I go to try to pull him out, I’m going to plop in. So here we go again. I just had myself prepared. So I was back in rescue mode and I was like, “Alright, here we go. I’m going to get him out.” I grabbed his hand and by just holding it, like holding the log and his hand and kind of pulling on his elbow, he did just what I had done and he just kicked his legs, picked up his right leg up onto the edge of the ice, and started pushing the log and army crawling forward, and he just got himself out that quickly.
Again, I’ll say, my dad’s in his 70s, but he’s also still a triathlete to this day, swimming, biking, running all year long. He doesn’t stop. So I’ll just say through this whole thing and afterwards I was like, “Thank goodness we’re all exercising fit people,” because all the things we did just couldn’t be done by anybody.
Scott
Yeah. All of those hours spent lifting weights, it’s paying off today.
Maggie
Yeah. My dad got himself out really quickly, and then I was like, “Okay, well, let me get away.” So I spun onto my back. I still had the rope, and my mom pulled me very quickly to shore. I just went flying on my back towards shore and my dad just kept pushing that log towards shore. I finally felt the ice go from, like, slush to ice. I looked and I could see tree branches over my head, so I was like, “Oh, I’m basically back.” I was maybe 20 feet from shore, but it felt like a safe zone, I guess, so I let go of the rope and decided to take a nap. I was like, “Ugh.”
Scott
Take a nap.
Maggie
Yeah. I was so tired. My brain’s so dumb. I’m not cold. Anyways, I’m just really tired. Apparently, my mom was yelling at me again and I wasn’t paying any attention or listening to her just like my plan B swim of death where my mom said, “You won’t make it.” And I wasn’t listening. Here I was again. My mom’s like, “Get up. You need to go get warmed up!” She had to use a sneaky technique. She said to me, “Beni’s cold. You need to get Beni to the sauna because my parents’ place has a sauna.” It’s so weird. I really literally don’t remember her telling me to get up. I was that much ignoring her. But when she said, “Beni is cold,” my crazy dog mom brain was like, “Oh, Beni’s cold.” She’s like, “Keep coming. You’re not even on land yet.”
So I got up and kind of crawled and then I think, at some point, I stood up and got to shore and I yelled for Beni. Honestly, at first, when I stood up, I didn’t know if it’s going to work. I didn’t feel my feet. It was just like before. I’m in my socks, I’m running through the woods to my parents’ house. I’m just like, “Keep moving,” About halfway there, I remember I was like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t feel good at all.” Mostly felt overwhelming nausea halfway there, and I was definitely not expecting that. I just felt really sick to my stomach and I was just kind of telling myself, “Oh, I’m so dumb. My brain is so dumb. But keep going. Somehow keep going.”
I got to their house, I got in, and I went to the sauna. You have to press the buttons on a panel outside the door to turn it on, and my hands, let alone my fingers, weren’t doing anything. I just started just kind of flapping my hands on the panel in the general vicinity of the on button and, after a while, I almost gave up. I was like, “Well, my parents will have to get here and turn it on” and then finally it turned on, and I’m like, “Oh, good” Then I looked, I was like, “Oh gosh. I got blood everywhere.” There was blood on the panel. There was blood on the wall. I went into the sauna and sat down and then I looked, and that’s when I noticed my legs are bloody, my elbows are bloody, my forearms are bloody, my hands are dripping blood, and I’m dripping blood all over the sauna. And I’m like, “Oh, no.” Like, things I worried about at that time was, “Look what I’m doing to my parents’ sauna.”
Scott
At this point, you were hypothermic. Is that correct?
Maggie
Yes. At this point, I still was not cold and I would be in the sauna for quite a while before I started shivering again. I believe that’s the separation between mild hypothermia and moderate hypothermia – when you’re not able to shiver, which means you can’t warm yourself. So just simply getting me in dry clothes was not going to be enough. I was very lucky to have a sauna. Other things online say an electric blanket, something like that, or another person’s body heat. But once you get to that point where you’re not shivering and you’re not cold, and I’d been that way for quite a while, you can’t warm yourself up. You need an external source.
Scott
It just feels like going from being hypothermic into a sauna would be too sudden. Don’t you have to warm up gradually.
Maggie
Right. My mom had actually called my sister and they were Googling things. The number one thing was to warm up the person slowly. If you don’t have an at-home sauna– I don’t know about commercial saunas but, typically, I turn the sauna on about one hour before I go in. So at the beginning of my workout video or something, I’ll turn the sauna on because it takes about an hour to get up to that 140 degrees or whatever that you want.
Scott
Oh, okay.
Maggie
So when I got in, my parents kept the house at 65 – they’re cold weather people. So the house was 65 degrees, so the sauna was 65 degrees when I got in.
Scott
So it was room temperature and it warms up very slowly. So that’s kind of perfect.
Maggie
Yes, Very slowly warms up. So it was a good slow warming process. The first problem I had though– the nausea was my biggest problem for a while, and then what took over was this horrible pain in my hands and fingers. I’ve gotten some kind of mild frostbite here and there just doing winter sports or being a kid playing outside and stuff where certain tips of your fingers turned white or even green or whatever. This was my whole entire hand and they weren’t white yet. They were worse. They were dark purple and swollen and gross and bloody and hurting really bad. I can’t stand this. I don’t know what to do, but something has to be done. My hands hurt so bad. Right around this time, my dad shows up and joins me in the sauna. My mom shows up and she gets me clean, dry sweatpants and sweatshirt to change into. She gave me this sweatpants and sweatshirt and I was like, “Mom, my hand, they hurt so bad. Oh my gosh.” Already, by now, my brain started to come back. I could feel my brain was rebounding. So that was one of the first things coming back. It’s kind of weird how– you know that your brain is not working well and then you suddenly you’re like, “Okay, my brain’s getting better. I can think clearly.”
My mom – I don’t know how she knows this because I tried to Google this since and I can’t find the answer – she comes back with a pot from the kitchen of cold water and she’s like, “Put your hands in here.” The second I put my hands in that cold water, it was fixed. It was an immediate relief. It went from horribly painful to totally fine. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Thank God. How did you know how to do that?” And she’s like, “That’s just something I’ve always known. Kids were always getting cold hands playing in the snow. We did this when you were little too.” I vaguely kind of remember maybe having some cold water when my hands got bad as a kid.
Scott
Okay, so that was your hands. What about your feet? Usually, extremities have effects.
Maggie
Yes. I still mean to do this – to write the wool sock company – but my feet were nothing like my hands. It wasn’t just that they protected them from cuts. I didn’t have any cuts on my toes, but they never were in pain like my hands were, and they weren’t that purple, dark color. All of my toes were just white. Not great, but completely white toes, which I think is not– I don’t know the levels or words for types of frostbite, but reasonable. Within probably 10 minutes, they got to pink from being dry and in the sauna, stayed warmed up. They tangled like that horrible feeling like something’s asleep – that’s like when they’re white – but they weren’t as painful as my hands were and they never got to that level. My hands were at a totally different level of frostbite than my feet were.
Scott
And who is the sock manufacturer? Or do you know?
Maggie
I do know, and I wrote to myself and I can tell you later, but I have one singular pair of socks and I do have it in my email.
Scott
If you let me know later, I can mention it in the outro. That’d be fine.
Maggie
Yeah, it’s fair. It’s nice to them. They were very thick, wooly wool socks and now they’re my special. So, lucky socks for sure.
Scott
At that time, did you feel like you needed to go to the hospital?
Maggie
We definitely had that discussion – my mom, dad, and I – about if I should go to the hospital. Many things were involved. One was the nearest hospital is about an hour away and I’m warming up in the sauna. And based on Googling, the thing you’re supposed to do is warm yourself up gradually. You’re in the sauna and the idea of me getting into the car to drive an hour away sounded actually kind of not a good plan. After about a few minutes of my hands being in that pot, my hands started to get cold, so I took them out and that’s right around the time my fingers turned white, so I think I’m in the clear. My gut feeling was if they stayed purple or black, that’s like amputation scariness. So it was too far to go to the hospital. I was already getting warmed up. My fingers started to turn white and get cold, so I took them out of the pot. I suddenly started to get cold and shiver, so I figured that’s a good sign. I’m finally shivering and cold. Even if you don’t technically know stuff, there’s some things you can just kind of use logic like, “Okay, if I’m feeling cold and shivering, that’s probably better than literally not being cold in this situation.”
The only other main symptom I had was I was wheezing, and I didn’t think too much of that. I was like, “Oh, well, you get sick sometimes. It’s cold.” I don’t know. I’m wheezing. At the time, I didn’t know what that was. I would later Google and figure out what that was. If I had known, I should have gone to the hospital, is what I would say now.
Scott
What was it?
Maggie
I Googled, and that’s pulmonary edema. During hypothermia when I was in the lake, the blood in your body goes from your extremities to your heart and lungs to keep the important parts of your body functioning, that’s why your hands and feet and stuff start to not work so well. After a while, when all of that blood rushes to your heart and lungs to keep them going, it increases the blood pressure really high and your blood vessels actually leak out and it leaks out into your lungs. That’s why I was wheezing. And it would get worse later that night when I went to sleep and I actually woke up a few times, gagging, and choking on phlegm, like literally choking and not breathing. It would wake me up and I’d have to cough this gunk out of my throat. I thankfully have an adjustable base bed, so I sat it up just like you would if you had pneumonia or upper respiratory infection or something to sit up. So I was like, “This is a good idea,” but I still kept waking up, choking and coughing and coughing up gunk from my lungs. I think I should have probably gone and been monitored so that I didn’t die in my sleep the next night.
It took maybe three nights before I could breathe during the night and sleep at a normal angle and my wheezing went away. I had no feeling from my elbows down to my fingers or on my stomach like it was asleep, like this super annoying thing of your hand being asleep or something. Both of my arms are all the way down – elbows to my fingers and my stomach. So this was like the areas where I was army crawling and it was against the ice so much. It’s from blood vessel damage and sometimes it’s also from nerve damage. Online, it said, for days, weeks, months, or even years or forever, you can have lost feeling in certain areas of your body from frostbite. So it’s kind of weird. You don’t think of your stomach getting frostbite but my stomach got frostbite and, thankfully, for me, it was a matter of four days. It was very like, oh gosh, please don’t be weeks, months, or forever.
Four days later, the feeling had come back to my hands and my arms and my stomach. Frostbite blisters appeared the next day. I had just a couple, maybe three big ones – the type of blisters that you’d get on your heel from walking in new boots or something. Then, the next day, I started getting little ones all over my fingers.
Scott
What could you have done differently, or how would you prepare for this going forward, assuming it might happen again?
Maggie
Yes, my parents and I have definitely spent a lot of time thinking of what to do and planning if it happens again. But more than anything, the first plan is prevention. The first step is prevention. Next year, when the trucks and the ice house villages go away, the dogs will just be on leashes when they go outside. Even though we live in the forest, it’ll be back to Chicago city life for us and I will just leash them up to take them outside and that’s how they’ll go to the bathroom for two or three weeks, like not the end of the world. That’s how they used to live their life until the lake is 100% open, until it’s open to the shore.
Other than that though, because you never know, dogs slip by things or other people – people who live nearby or vacation nearby could have something happen to them or their dog – so we both already have emergency ice picks by our front doors. My dad actually already owned two pairs of these for when he does a variety of sports on the lake. So he already has these. They go around your neck and there are these handles with ice picks on the end covered in plastic covers. When you jab them down into the ice, the plastic pushes up and the spike is there. It’s visible. The little plastic covers are safety things, so you don’t actually poke yourself, but once you slam them down the ice – this is in case you don’t have a Beni footprint handle – then you use the ice picks. So that’s what helps you get out of your hole.
The other thing we would have is very good, long intact ropes and we decided just to have them by our front doors because you never know where this thing’s going to happen. It’s not necessarily going to happen right outside my house. This time, it could happen down the lake somewhere. Have a big, long intact rope. The other thing is either a kayak or we have a really nice flat bottomed canoe that won’t be completely covered by a tarp and inaccessible. I actually recently went to my first local dentist appointment and my hygienist up here said, “This happens all the time. People up here are always going to the lake themselves, their dogs, whatever.” She said that her neighbor recently rescued a deer without going in, and I was like, “Okay, if you can rescue a deer, you can certainly rescue a dog. Tell me the trick.” And she said, “You get a flat bottom canoe. You tie a rope to one end of it, then you sit in the canoe and you use your hands to push the canoe out. The canoe is so big and long, it won’t fall through. He just leaned over the side of the canoe and grabbed the deer around its body. Then, the person on shore pulled the rope in and he sort of just held onto the deer over the side of the canoe and kind of pulled it up onto the top of the ice and kind of dragged it, just held on tight as they dragged the canoe back by the rope, and then kind of dragged the deer until they got to shore. Then, he let go of the deer and it ran away.” So I’m like, “Okay, yes, we need that flat bottom canoe out. We need a rope.”
For me, I would say, even if I didn’t have them on, I would take the spare time to put on any kind of gloves and wool socks. My feet compared to my hands was night and day. So we’ve talked about putting socks and gloves in, like, a bucket with the rope maybe by the door. We have till next winter to get the details. Also, step one, call 911. I almost forgot we had it. We haven’t had 911 service here for most of my life, but it has been added.
The day after this happened– this was April 10th, and it was a Thursday. That Friday, it was in the news that at a lake not that far away from here – same town, a different lake – a guy had gone into the lake to get his dog. He got the dog out. Dog was okay. Whew. But he couldn’t get himself out. He was stuck. They had called 911 and it took them 30 minutes to get there, which actually, I’m surprised they could get there that fast actually. When they got there 30 minutes later, that guy was clinging to a canoe, so he had done the canoe thing and he was clinging to that. So he probably at least had his arms out of the water maybe – and his head. The rescue people went out. They are very well versed. They called it, like, their ice rescue team or something. They have to do this all the time. Like they said, ATVs are always going in and that kind of thing up here all the time. So they have their process. So that should be our backup plan. Clearly, if somehow we can’t get out or the dog can’t get out, it would’ve been nice to know that, in about 30 minutes, the ice rescue team’s going to be there.
Scott
Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?
Maggie
I’ll say, for the safety of other people, the 1-10-1 rule. You have one minute after you fall in to calm your breathing and calm yourself enough to not gasp in water and stuff. Apparently, that’s most people’s experience when they first fall through. I think mine was different because I was planning to fall through. When I fell in, I was on the ice and then a split second later I was a hundred percent in. It happened in a split second. If I wasn’t planning on that, I could see how that could be a shock. They said a lot of people gasp in water and choke on water during that first minute. So they said, spend one minute calming yourself. So that’s the first part.
The 10 minutes is 10 minutes of purposeful movement of your body. This is the evidence where my 15 minute swim was not going to work. I had already been in the water for at least 5 minutes when I came up with this brilliant plan that my mom said, “You’re never going to make it.” She was right based on the 1-10-1 rule. You have about 10 minutes before your hands and all the blood goes to your heart and lungs and your hands and feet can’t swim anymore.
Then, 1 hour is how much time you have. Let’s say you have a life jacket on, or somehow you’re holding on to something, you have one hour before somebody else can come rescue you before you’re dead on average. If I had known that, that would’ve given me so much information. I would’ve known that swimming was not an option. I wouldn’t have wasted time making that trail out deeper. I would’ve known getting him to shore was the only option. And then the 1 hour rule, if we knew that 1 hour before you’re dead, it’s like calling 911 even if it does take a half hour. You’ll still be okay as long as it does take a half hour. But to know that you have 10 minutes to self rescue, basically, they say that’s really important information to have. Also, I forgot to say Josie was soaking wet head to foot. That reminded me that she self rescued herself. She fell in.
Scott
So Josie, your other dog fell in as well then?
Maggie
Yes, I only found out after I was in the sauna for a while. My mom told me. This is the other thing I don’t think we covered but, to assure people, neither Josie nor Beni were cold. They were not suffering. They didn’t have cuts on their body and they weren’t needing help to recover from the cold. They just needed recovery from getting yelled at by grandma.
Scott:
Mental anguish. My audience– many are dog lovers, so they’re going to be very happy that you were able to rescue the dogs. And I think everyone else is happy that you got out safely too, as well as your mom and dad.
Maggie
Good. And I hope that it gives some people some tools to keep themselves safe and their dogs safe in the future.
Scott
If you’re wondering about the socks that protected Maggie’s feet throughout this ordeal, the brand name is Bridgedale. They’re at Bridgedale.com and that link is also in the episode notes, along with pictures of Maggie and her dogs, at WhatWasThatLike.com/219.
And there was one other thing I asked Maggie – if the dogs don’t normally venture out onto the ice, what caused them to do it this time?
Maggie
The day after, there were about 200 ducks on this lake. That’s what happened. That’s why they went out there that day. That was why, on that date, for the first time, when they’d never done it before, they went out in the lake. It was the next day when I looked out and suddenly our lake went from zero birds to about 200 birds – a giant mixed flock of multiple different species had landed on the lake. That’s what made them go out there.
Scott
Also – Maggie is in the What Was That Like Facebook group. So if you have a question that I didn’t ask her, you can ask her directly. WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And it’s time now for the Listener Story. Every What Was That Like episode ends with a 5-10 minute story that was sent in by a listener. Just like you. And speaking of you – why haven’t we heard YOUR story yet? Just record it on your phone and send it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This listener tells about her daughter – who wanted fairness at a very young age.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener Story)
Years ago, my children were students in a Waldorf-based charter school. Some of you might be wondering what that is. Waldorf is an educational philosophy that’s very holistic and gentle. It incorporates a lot of things like nature, music, and art. It does not include mainstream academic things like homework, grades, or even detention. They had a playground that included the woods to play in, trees to climb, rope swings, gardens, even chickens. It was very idyllic. I should stop here to add that my second child, Maggie, was and still is incredibly determined, strong-willed even. She knows what she wants and she’s not afraid to bulldoze her way into getting it.
When Maggie was in first grade, her older sister, Izzy, was in fourth grade. Izzy and her classmates had formed a sort of storytelling club where they made books complete with illustrations and stories. They would work on these stories during recess, and Maggie wanted in. Unfortunately for her, the fourth graders had a rule that only fourth graders could be in the club. Most kids would find a way to handle this disappointment in a more appropriate way, but we’re talking about Maggie here. She wanted in that club, and she was not taking no for an answer.
So what did Maggie do? Well, she gathered her fellow first graders and rallied them towards her cause. This is an injustice and they were not going to allow the fourth graders to exclude others. No way. So Maggie laid out her plan, acting as a sort of general to the first graders, and they all readily agreed to join in the plan. They were eager to fight injustice. They started by rounding up weapons that they could, including rocks, sticks, even forks from their lunches. Once they were properly armed, they launched a surprise attack on the fourth graders charging at them like a scene straight from Gettysburg. They attacked the unsuspecting older kids until the skirmish was ended by the teachers and the first graders won.
The club was disbanded, but not without cost. The entire first grade, every single student earned a loss of recess for a week, and they had to do chores in lieu of recess time. I would like to remind you here that this is at a school that does not believe in punitive measures. So, when the school called to tell me what happened, I was mortified. I was embarrassed that my child had caused the entire class to be punished and that each of the other students’ parents had to be notified of what happened. But then, the more I thought about it, I came to feel some pride. My daughter saw what she perceived to be an injustice, and she rallied her peers to help her fight this injustice. When she was punished for it, she bravely accepted her fate and was proud of her courage, her conviction, and her leadership all shown at such a young age.
Maggie is now 16 years old. She’s a straight-A student now in a school that assigns grades, takes AP classes, is extremely talented in art and music, and was recently accepted into a highly competitive high school program that aligns with her future goals, and she is still incredibly headstrong.