37-year-old Dave Kehnast, of Chicago, Illinois, has made national news for his daring rescue of a Golden Retriever mix who ran away from his owner more than a week ago and got stranded out on the floating ice sheets on Lake Michigan. Kehnast told FOX News Chicago, “I was up on the fire escape there on the seventh floor up there and I saw him way out there and so I grabbed the kayak over here and I know that the lake is only a couple of feet deep all the way out to where the ice shelf ends so I knew I’d be fine. And so I grabbed the kayak and went out there.” The FOX News helicopter had spotted the dog as well and managed to film the entire rescue. Kenhast said, “I just kept encouraging him, ‘here boy, here boy, here boy. I got really close to him and he wanted to bite me so I just stayed on him and at that point I could get into the water and just hustled him along.”

The Chicago Fired Department responded as well, bringing in a boat and attempting to use a helicopter to move the dog closer to shore. Deputy District Chief Ron Dorneker said, “”We responded and found the dog quite a distance offshore, maybe close to half a mile off shore, running around on the icebergs out there and falling through to the open water.” The dog feel into the freezing water several times, but he never seemed to tire. In fact, when he was finally back on land he took off running into an apartment complex where Animal Care and Control eventually found him and were able to catch him.