TMSG: Tugboat Crew Rescues Dog From Ice Floe

Max the mutt somehow found himself in a terrible position. He was missing from Muskegon, Michigan and somehow ended up floating on an ice floe in the middle of the lake for as many as 36 hours before being found.

A group of guys on tugboat Barbara Andrie were returning from a 20-hour trip to Milwaukee on Monday, March 2nd when they couldn’t believe what they saw in the middle of the lake. They had just entered the channel from Lake Michigan around 8:30 p.m. when they saw a dog stranded on a small ice floe that appeared in their boat’s spotlight.

The boat’s captain Dave Wellington told MLive,

“Everybody was like ‘No question, we’re going to get him. We weren’t going to leave him out there. There’s no way. We were going to get him.”

They slowly backed their tugboat up to the pup and when they were close enough, crew members used a pole with a hook on the end to carefully snag the ice floe and pull it to them. It took the crew about 20 minutes, but finally they were able to slip a rope over the pup’s neck and pull him to safely.

They saw tags on the pup and learned his name was Max and were able to call the owners thanks to the number on the tag.