Rescuing Potter

Feb. 17, 2011

Dear Patty,

Early Sunday morning Cassie Kipper took her new dog Potter for a run in Capaha Park. Though the temperature still was below freezing, the frigidness of the past week was just beginning to lift. Seeing no one else in the frosty park that morning, Cassie released Potter from his leash. Usually he stays close to Cassie, but a minute later Potter suddenly turned to chase a goose onto the park's partially frozen lagoon. He had never chased geese before.

Nightmares begin this way.

The ice thinned about 20 feet from the bank and Potter, a strapping Weimaraner, fell in the water and couldn't get out. His head stuck above the water and he was swimming, so Cassie had a moment to think.

Suddenly the emptiness of the park became her enemy. She knew no one was around to help. Her parents live along the park's boundary, only a few hundred yards from the lagoon, but Cassie hadn't brought her cell phone.

"I thought, I know this is a really bad idea. But I really had no other option," she says.

Cassie is 25, a runner and strong swimmer. She knew she could swim to Potter if she could break through the ice. Her main concern was the numbing chill in the water.

She was wearing running tights and a running top. She took off her hoodie, no good to her now but surely later. First she started trying to break the ice by moving the huge rocks along the bank. Then she walked onto the ice and began stomping. Quickly she was knee-deep in freezing water. She began using her feet, her knees, her elbows and her hands to break ice.

When she no longer could touch the bottom of the lagoon anymore she slid on the ice on her belly and kept pounding.

After perhaps three or four minutes, time altered by adrenaline and cold and fear, she reached Potter and grabbed his collar. The two of them swam back to the bank.

Cassie was numb. She put her hoodie back on, and together again they ran to her parents' house.

This was Cassie's second rescue of Potter. She adopted him through a Weimaraner rescue organization just after Thanksgiving. Cassie is doing a dietetics internship at St. Louis University. She was back home in Cape Girardeau for the weekend to celebrate her mother Bonnie's birthday.

Her father Paul greeted Cassie and Potter at the door Sunday morning. Cassie was concerned about dripping lagoon water all over the house. She and Potter took hot showers.

The same protectiveness that inspired Cassie to climb into the lagoon to rescue her dog dictated her mother's first reaction to the story. "I was shocked that I wasn't there to help her," Bonnie says.

She did question Cassie getting on ice that wouldn't support Potter but says, "She didn't consider not doing it. That's her dog."

Cassie knew she could be risking her life for her dog. "I wasn't just going to leave him," she says.

People who love dogs have no difficulty understanding that. Dogs help us understand that the Genesis injunction to have dominion over every living thing doesn't mean we own them. It means we're responsible for them.

Cassie has some cuts and scratches from the rocks and the icebreaking. Potter is taking antibiotics for a cough. She hopes that will protect him from having swallowed unclean water.

The experience taught her something besides obeying the leash law. "I learned what it's like to be a mother," Cassie says. "It was really traumatic. I was so worried about him."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.