Brothers save neighbor's dog from frozen pond

SHILOH -- Josh Bishop said he couldn't ignore the haunting sound he heard Sunday morning.

"I thought it sounded like a dog, but it didn't really sound like a regular dog bark," said Bishop, 20. "I could tell though that something was obviously wrong."

Bishop said he had just stepped outside.

"It was about 7 a.m., and still dark outside," he said. "My first thought was to go down to my neighbor's pond. I had a cat that died in that pond last year, so my first instinct was to check there."

Grabbing a spotlight to shine on the water, Bishop said he saw what appeared to be a dog hanging onto the edge of the ice.

"There's an irrigation system in the middle, so while the rest of the pond was frozen, the middle was not," he said. "The dog obviously fell through that hole and was just barely hanging on."

Bishop said he ran back to his house and woke his younger brother, Eli.

Then he ran to the neighbor's home and borrowed his canoe.

"The dog was probably only three canoe lengths into the pond, but I didn't want to take the chance of walking out and having the ice break," Bishop said.

While Eli, 17, shined the spotlight onto the icy pond, Bishop edged the canoe to the dog, while his neighbor stood along the shore holding a rope with a buoy attached to the canoe.

"I just leaned over the front and grabbed the dog by his collar and pulled him out," Bishop said. "He had icicles all over his mouth."

Eli told his brother the black Labrador retriever belonged to their neighbor, Anne Moore.

Moore, 45, said she will always be grateful to the Bishops.

"I can't thank them enough," she said.