Labrador rescued by firefighters after falling through ice on frozen pond

A yellow Labrador was rescued by firefighters in Rhode Island after he wandered onto a thin layer of ice covering a pond and fell through.

Volunteer firefighters from the Misquamicut Fire Department and other emergency officials were called to the scene early on New Year’s Day.

Firefighters saw the dog named Phoenix struggling and unable to move to shore in the slushy, icy water.

Members from both the Misquamicut and Watch Hill fire departments donned ice rescue suits, which help protect the body from freezing temperatures, and entered the pond and successfully rescued Phoenix.

‘It was the chillest dog I’ve ever seen in my life,’ said Steve Howard, deputy chief of the Misquamicut Fire Department.

‘The dog never made a sound. He was pretty chill.’

The fire departments described the incident as ‘a successful first call of 2026’ in a statement posted on Facebook.

Phoenix was also uninjured, but Mr Howard made sure to check in with his owner later on Thursday.

‘He got a little bit of extra food last night,’ he said. ‘And he took a little nap.’

The fire department has warned that no ice is ‘ever safe’ to wander on in freezing conditions.

‘Our firefighters train extensively for cold water and ice rescues, but these situations are extremely dangerous,’ they said in a statement.

Last winter, a loyal dog refused to leave the place where her owner fell through the ice into a frozen river.

Photos showed Belka sitting by the place where her owner, who was bicycling, plunged into the icy waters in Bashkiria, Russia.

After a four-day search for Belka’s owner, the body of the 59-year-old was discovered downstream in the Ufa River.

Even after the body of Belka’s owner was found, she keeps returning to the spot where he fell through the ice – even after family members retrieved her and took her back home.

The heartbreaking tale has led Russians to compare Belka to the famous Japanese Akita dog Hachikō, a pet who waited endlessly for his master, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who had died.

Her owner had taken a short cut across the frozen river but the ice was not yet thick enough to hold him.

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