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Feb. 19, 2021 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
27:55
Situation Update, Feb. 19th, 2021 - My dog fell through the ICE... but I SAVED him!
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Time Text
Alright, Mike Adams here.
Situation update for February 18th.
My dog fell through the ice in my pond.
And I managed to save him.
And I'm going to explain this true story here of what happened.
If you hear me pacing around, it's because my mind is still racing.
It's like way past midnight.
I can't sleep.
But it's a happy ending.
My dog is safe.
He's a great Pyrenees.
And I feed my dogs late at night.
Because, you know, they're naturally nocturnal and so I actually feed my dogs.
Typically the last feeding is like 11pm or something like that.
Sometimes midnight, just depends on the night.
And tonight when I went to feed my dogs and I'm feeding them all in the barn where I have all this straw and the goats are there and the dogs are there and some chickens are there.
Because they just want to hang out for some reason, a rooster and a hen.
But this great Pyrenees was missing.
And it's not unusual for him to be missing.
Sometimes I have to walk around and call for him.
But I called for him and called and he didn't come.
And I thought, my God, it's cold.
You know, these are the Texas, the Arctic freeze has been haunting us here in Texas for several days.
And I started to get a little concerned.
Like, where is he?
So I fed the other dogs, and then I hopped on my Kubota to cruise around and start looking for this Great Pyrenees.
And I checked all the usual spots, couldn't find them.
And then I just happened to be scanning the pond and there he was.
His eyes reflect at night.
You know, all the animal eyes always reflect.
I wear a headlamp so I can see the eyes of dogs or deer or raccoons or what have you.
So anyway, I saw his eyes and he had fallen halfway through.
In the ice, he was like 15 feet offshore.
Yeah, 15, maybe 20.
And he had fallen in this hole.
The bottom half of his body was underwater.
His two front paws were on the ice.
And he was looking at me, and he was totally quiet.
He's kind of a quiet dog anyway.
He doesn't talk with barking.
He only barks at coyotes and such.
So he's just looking at me.
He's like, here I am.
I'm like, oh my god.
Oh my God, my dog's fallen through the ice 15 feet offshore.
How am I going to save him without dying myself?
Because one of the worst things that you can do is trying to save your dog is end up killing yourself by falling through the same ice that your dog fell through.
That's happened.
I actually, I know someone that that happened to.
And that immediately came to mind.
I'm like, okay, whatever I do here...
Even if I lose my dog, I'm not going to die in this ice.
That's not going to be the way this ends for me.
So whatever happens, I'm going to be safe.
So now, how do we solve this problem?
I got a dog in the ice.
The water is obviously very cold.
The ice is a few inches thick.
Or maybe in that spot it wasn't.
Maybe that's why he fell through, but I've seen it inches thick elsewhere.
So how do I solve this problem?
And also, I don't know how long he's been there.
He might have been there an hour, hour and a half, before I discovered that he was missing, you see.
And now he's a Great Pyrenees.
The Great Pyrenees, they love the cold.
And they have really thick fur.
But even Great Pyrenees can suffer from hypothermia, of course.
You know, the fur doesn't really do its job when it's wet, and its temperature's dropping, and it's below freezing already, and the bottom half of his body is in the water.
I'm like, oh my god, how do I save my dog here?
So, I have equipment at my ranch.
And if you've heard some of my podcasts, you know that sometimes the diesel engines start and sometimes they don't in cold weather.
And so one piece of equipment I have is an excavator.
It's kind of a small...
Relatively smallish excavator.
Not the smallest kind, but on the smaller side.
It's an excavator, so it's got a long arm with a bucket on the end.
It can reach out.
And it's got tracks.
And I figure, well...
Oh, and I have a thumb on the end of it.
So I have a bucket and a thumb, which allows you to grip things.
So I thought, okay, I'm going to see if I can start this excavator.
I'm going to drive it to the edge and I'm going to see if I can reach out and reach my dog and see if he'll climb onto the bucket or something.
I don't know exactly what I had in mind, but I thought the reach wasn't enough, so I had a ladder, an aluminum ladder, the kind that slides to make it longer.
I put that aluminum ladder in the grip of the bucket, and I clamped down on it, and I just crushed the crap out of that ladder.
The ladder is ruined.
But I had it at an angle to where I could get some extra reach.
So I figured, okay...
Oh, I forgot to tell you.
I did start the excavator.
But the only way I started it...
And this is not a product plug...
I mean, this is not an ad, but I swear to you, without this product, my dog probably would have died.
The product is this lithium-ion battery booster that I have them around the ranch because they're the only ones that have ever worked.
And it's made by a company called NOCO, N-O-C-O. And I think it's called the Boost Pro GB150. And it's made for starting diesel engines.
And sucker just freaking works, man.
It works.
And so I had one in my car.
I grabbed it out of my car.
I quickly connected it to the excavator battery and turned it on.
And then I was able to crank the excavator.
And it was like, oh, shit.
This is not going to start.
And I just kept cranking.
Then it starts up.
And I'm like, oh my God, this is a lifesaver.
I swear to you, without that NOCO battery boost, I would not have been able to save my dog.
Someone's probably going to tell that company about this.
But their product, it actually works.
So anyway...
I grabbed the ladder with the thumb, crushed the ladder, and I cranked the throttle on that excavator All the way up, which you're never supposed to do unless you warm it up.
I'm sure I caused some engine damage, you know, because you're never supposed to high throttle a diesel engine when it's below freezing.
It's just not good for it.
And the hydraulics and everything is not good, but I didn't care.
So I cranked it all the way up and I drove that sucker.
As fast as I could, which is not very fast because excavators are crawlers.
They're very slow.
But I drove as fast as I could to the shore of the pond.
And I realized I'm going to have to drive this machine into the pond.
You know, a little bit.
Maybe five or six feet.
So I did.
I just drove right into the ice, into the mud.
I could feel the machine starting to sink a little bit.
I'm like, if this gets bad, I'm just going to bail and rescue the machine later.
I was like, I don't care.
I'm going to save my dog.
If I end up with my excavator stuck in the pond, so be it.
But I'm going to try everything to save my dog.
So I was manipulating the arm with the ladder, and I got the ladder right next to him.
I'm like, come on, come on, climb on the ladder.
He wouldn't do it.
He didn't know what to do.
He thought I was attacking him with the ladder or something.
He was like, ah!
I could see him struggling, so I'm like, this ladder idea is not going to work.
So I swung the arm around.
I tossed the ladder back on the shore, and it's all crushed and ruined anyway.
And then I swung the arm back around with the bucket, and I just started crushing the ice.
And I drove in a little bit further, and I was able to crush the ice so that it broke in front of my dog.
And then he was able to just start swimming.
And he just swam right towards me.
And I'm like, come on, come on, come on.
And he swam towards the machine, and he made it to the shore.
It's like he couldn't do it when the ice was there because the ice was slippery and he couldn't break the ice.
But with the machine, I was able to break the ice and just cracked it with that bucket.
I mean, the bucket itself weighs like 600 pounds, so that was easy to do.
And he swam all the way to the shore and he dragged himself out of the mud.
I could tell he was moving really slow.
And I'm thinking, oh my god, you know, hypothermia, he's in bad shape.
So he starts walking towards the barn.
And now I'm in the machine, in the pond, thinking, like, I gotta get this thing out of the pond.
Otherwise, this is going to freeze over.
The machine is going to be totally frozen into the pond.
I'll never be able to start it again.
You know, whatever, because the wind is blowing out here.
So the nice thing about running excavators, and I've got about a thousand hours, I think, on this particular machine, so you could consider me to be a very good operator.
I can do things with this machine that would blow your mind.
But anyway...
So one of the reasons I knew that I could drive into the pond and get out is because what you can do on an excavator is you can always swing the arm around 180 degrees, and you can dig into the shoreline and pull towards you while you're running the tracks in reverse.
So you're actually using the arm to pull yourself out of whatever you're stuck in.
And it was stuck good.
It was muddy, and I tore the crap out of the shoreline.
Trying to pull that machine out.
And it was slow going.
But I could see my dog.
He was fine.
He was walking towards the barn.
So with a couple more swipes with the arm and the bucket and everything, I was able to get the machine out.
Out of the water.
Out of the mud.
And I was able to get that machine up onto normal land.
And I knew that that was fine.
I actually abandoned the machine.
I left it running there because I wanted to keep the engine warm in case I need it, you know, the next day or something.
So I'll tell you, well, I'll give you more details about that.
But I left the machine running, and then I ran in to the barn to check on my dog, and he's, like, shivering and freaked out.
And so I ran and got a hair dryer.
And...
This is during the blackouts in Texas where normally it's been like 10 minutes...
Of power on and then 20 minutes off.
And that kind of timing has been going on for days.
So I'm thinking, my God, I need to warm...
I need to increase the core body temperature of my dog here because he's probably hypothermic.
And he might die even after I got him out of the pond.
Well, he did the swimming, I did the ice breaking.
So I guess it's a team effort.
But I'm thinking, man, I've got to raise this guy's core temperature here.
So I grabbed the hair dryer, plugged it in.
Fortunately, the power is on.
And so I'm blow drying him.
And he's like, his hair, I'm rubbing his hair with my hand as I'm blow drying it.
It's just covered with ice, like above the shoulders up.
It's just like, his hair is like icy hair.
And then below the shoulders, it wasn't ice.
It was just soggy wet, totally wet.
Everything from, you know, the shoulders down, just totally wet.
So I start blow drying them.
You know, I mean, imagine the scene.
Here I am in a pile of straw in a barn in Texas in the middle of an Arctic, you know, freeze.
With goats and chickens and dogs, and I'm blow-drying my great pyrides that I just rescued from sinking through the ice in my pond.
Like, this is the scene.
And I'm praying to God that the power stays on.
Because the blackouts have been bad.
And wouldn't you know it?
Wouldn't you know it?
The power stays on for an hour.
For the first time in four days.
It stays on for an hour.
And I blow dry my dog until he stops shivering.
I kid you not!
And he's just standing there while he was sitting and sometimes standing.
He's just looking at me and just letting me blow dry him because he could feel that it was warm air.
He stopped shivering and it warmed up and then his hair got dry.
And then I was able to leave him there surrounded by a straw with a heat lamp on him.
The kind of heat lamp that I use to brood baby chicks.
I happen to have a few of those heat lamps.
Boy, have those been handy lately.
So I put a heat lamp on him.
And, in fact, I just checked on him before I did this recording.
He's doing great.
Oh, and I fed him, too.
So he got his meal.
A lot of food.
Fed him a couple of eggs, plus some kibble, plus some really high-end fish-based dog food, and a packet of, what is it?
This organic beef soup.
I forgot the name of the company, but it's delicious stuff, so I just gave him a big packet of this beef soup.
So he was living it up now, and all this time I was thinking, If I had just gone on to do something different and hadn't really gone out to look for him, he'd be dead.
He would have died in that pond.
He would have eventually just ran out of energy and froze to death.
And if I couldn't have started my excavator, he would have died.
If I didn't have that lithium booster, he would have died.
Seriously.
I'm not trying to I'm not trying to turn it into a product plug at all, but it's just that I've bought different battery boosters online, kind of like made-in-China boosters that are just, they're crap.
Like, none of them work.
And the NOCO one is the only one.
In fact, I used that same thing to start one of my other smaller tractors earlier today.
I had to move out of the way to get to my bigger tractor, which I still can't start.
I can't start my big tractor yet.
It's just totally frozen solid, but with this booster, I was able to start the excavator.
I was able to save my dog.
No shit.
Sorry to use profanity, but it's just the honest truth.
If I didn't have that machine, if I didn't have that device, if I hadn't gone out looking for him, He would have died.
And it's not just that he would have died.
He would have died in like the worst way possible or one of the worst ways, you know, freezing to death.
And I would have discovered him the next day and I would have had to live with that torment that I failed to save my own dog.
But thank God tonight I can bring you this report.
I saved my dog.
I saved him.
He's sleeping in the straw right now.
Oh, and by the way, I'm locking them all in the barn.
They're all locked in now until the ice melts.
There's not going to be any more unsupervised dog play time on the ranch until the ice melts because these dogs don't have the experience, obviously, of what happens with ice, you know?
So they're locked in.
If I have to lock them in there for the next four days, just so be it.
Obviously, you know, they'll have food and water and I'll visit them and everything, but they are not going to get out and run around an icy pond again.
Because this time, the fact that I could save him this time, I mean, it was, I got to thank God, you know, for, I guess, giving me that urge to go out and look for him.
And I was even thinking when I was driving the Kubota around looking for him, I was even thinking, if I can't find him after this pass, I'm going to walk the shoreline of the pond because animals can fall through.
I mean, that thought was in my head.
So I was aware of that.
I was going to check the shoreline next.
So thank God that I was able to spot him and save him.
So anyway, they're prisoners now.
They're prisoners in the barn for a little while until the ice melts, which might be Sunday or something.
I mean, I'll let them out, but only when I'm watching them.
So in other words...
There's no unsupervised running around anymore because these dogs don't know about ice, obviously, although this Great Pyrenees, I think, just got an important lesson in the physics of ice.
I don't know if he's learned that lesson for good or not.
I don't know.
I'm not going to give him the chance to find out.
He's not going on the ice anymore.
I will be right there.
So this is just another part of the crazy adventure.
That's happening in Texas due to this Arctic freeze situation.
We've never had ice on the pond before.
So our animals have never seen that before.
You know, we've never had rolling blackouts before.
And yet, it's amazing.
The one time I needed the hair dryer, the power worked.
So I guess I got to thank, you know, really the linesmen out there, the power company people, the people working hard to bring more coal plants online.
I got to thank them.
Because my dog was shivering.
He needed that heat.
He needed the power grid, man.
Without the power, I don't know.
He might not have made it.
He might have died of hypothermia even after he got out.
Because he was soaking wet.
I mean, he was half covered with ice.
That is some crazy strong dog.
Tell you what, he's good with goats too.
He's good.
He's a protector.
Great Pyrenees are really great dogs.
Kind of natural protectors.
So I just feel so blessed and so fortunate that I was able to save him and not have him die.
But I also know that other people, you know, pets are dying in the cold, just freezing to death.
You know, pets that aren't acclimated to the outdoors like this.
I mean, I'm lucky that Great Pyrides is built for crazy cold weather.
I mean, they're right at home.
Like, when there's snow on the ground, he'll just lay in the snow, you know?
He's just sitting.
They're built for snow.
They're snow dogs.
That's where they want to be, is in the Himalayan mountains or whatever.
They really hate the summer.
So they're built for it.
But other dogs that are not cold weather dogs, I mean, they can die very quickly.
They're quite susceptible to cold weather.
And we also have people dying in Texas.
And I even heard there was a...
I don't know where it was.
There was some kind of a primate enclosure or zoo type situation.
The primates all died.
Because they got too cold because the power grid went down and there's no heat.
I mean, this is happening.
People and animals are dying all across Texas right now.
I'm just thankful that my dog didn't join that list of deaths because that would have been really devastating.
I'm just glad that I was able to get in there and break that ice and drive that excavator into the pond and just get him to swim to shore.
He made it.
Man, if he started sinking, I was just going to reach for him with the bucket, you know?
You got to be careful with the bucket because you can kill an animal or a person with the bucket.
It's got teeth on it.
It's not a gentle thing.
You know, an excavator with a giant bucket is very dangerous.
It's got a lot of hydraulic pressure.
You could crush bones and so on.
So you've got to be real careful with it.
But, you know, thankfully everything turned out on the positive side in this case.
So, you know, once again, man, I was just joking in the previous podcast, like, Texas is a hard life.
And that at one level, I want Texas to be hard because I don't want I don't want people to stay in Texas unless they are tough people.
You know what I mean?
This is not an easy place to live.
And in the last year, it hasn't been easy at all.
I mean, just with this cold freeze situation and the rolling blackouts and the lack of water and everything, it's been really trying for a lot of people.
But, man, every day another crazy thing happens.
Every day another challenge.
And just thank God that I've got the ability to To keep solving these problems as they pop up and keep doing what's necessary to save lives and keep things going.
So those of you who have pets, you know where my heart is on this.
I mean, can you imagine losing your dog, watching him die in a hole in the ice?
That's just torturous.
But I didn't have to watch him die.
I got to watch him swim to shore.
He struggled with it, by the way.
He barely dragged his ass out of the mud.
He was really weak.
So I think another half hour might have been over.
But in any case, there you go.
So that's my Wednesday night in Central Texas.
another crazy adventure in the situation update.
I mean, I gosh, I thought the election was nuts.
And then look at this, look at this Arctic freeze.
Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow?
I'm almost afraid to find out, but whatever it is, we'll face it.
And we'll, we'll ask God for guidance and we'll work towards solutions.
So thank you for all your support and all your prayers.
And I, Heh.
Oh, last thing.
If you have a dog that falls through the ice, the answer is to break the ice between the dog and the shore.
They can probably swim to shore.
That's what my dog did.
So that's the answer.
Break the ice if you can.
I don't know.
Maybe you can...
I don't know.
I just happen to have a machine.
That I can break the ice with an arm.
But I guess options for breaking the ice are pretty slim.
But I don't know.
Keep an eye on your dogs if they're not used to ice.
I should have maybe had more supervision in the first place.
I didn't think they were going to run around on the pond, but they did!
So, there's something I've learned, too.
Texas dogs don't know anything about ice, just like Texas drivers don't know anything about ice on their roads.
All right, we all live and learn and try to move forward with each day.
I'll give you another update tomorrow if I can, bandwidth permitting, and all my animals are safe.
I hope yours are as well.
Thank you for listening.
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I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and I'm the author of Survival Nutrition.
I founded and run a multi-million dollar food science laboratory, and I'm the author of the best-selling science book, Food Forensics.
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