Sault Ste. Marie man needs rescue after saving dog from Trout Lake

Sometimes, a person will do just about anything for his dog — and Sault Ste. Marie's Matt Connors proved that recently.

Connors looked outside his home on Trout Lake, and saw his dog Iggi had wandered onto the not quite frozen ice.

He didn’t hesitate and ran out of the house in his bare feet when he realized Iggi fell through the ice.

“I didn’t know what to do. I just saw the dog and I just had to get out there,” he said.

“It was kind of a panic situation to see.”

Connors headed out onto the ice and realized he had to get off it once it started cracking beneath his feet.

Worried he may fall in and not able to help Iggi, he yelled for his wife Melissa to grab a ladder.

“I figured I’d be able to … slide out on the ladder,” he said. “I was never really thinking. I was just kind of doing.”

At that point, Connors noticed his nearby canoe, which he pulled out of a frozen snow bank.  He slid the canoe across the ice to get to his dog. 

“Looking at him, I realized he didn’t have much time,” he said. Connors made his way over to Iggi and jumped into the canoe to rescue him.

“When I did get out, I could see he fell through but it was like a ten foot hole now because he kept trying to get back on [the ice].”

Connors tried to coax Iggi to grab onto the canoe so he could pull him in, but he said at that point, Iggi couldn’t do anything.

“The look in his eyes … it was like fear, but it was like he also was resigned that it was over,” he said.

Connors eventually was able to grab on to Iggi and pull him into the canoe, but then realized he would need help to get them both to shore. By that time they were both soaked.

He yelled to his wife to call the fire department for help, before lying down in the canoe with Iggi to wait for assistance.

Crews showed up, and safely brought Connors and Iggi to solid ground.

As for Iggi, Connors said his wife brought him inside, dried him up and he’s doing fine.

“You don’t think about it at the time, but afterwards, you think about it and it’s like ‘Oh my God, I’m just so glad I got to him,’” he said.

“I think it would be something that anybody would really have done. You couldn’t just leave the dog out there.”