Firefighters in New Jersey rescued a dog that became stranded on an island of debris in a pond Tuesday after chasing a flock of geese.
Captain Joe Coletta of the Bloomfield Fire Department waded into waist-high water to rescue the pooch from Clarks Pond behind the local middle school.
A video of the rescue shows the dog standing atop floating tree branches and other debris and carefully walking toward Coletta, who climbs out of a rowboat to retrieve the dog.
The dog, named Iggy, had been stranded for about an hour. His owner Carlos Velez told NBC 4 New York he had been walking him next to the school field when Iggy spotted some geese, got free of his leash and chased them all the way into the pond filled with muck and debris.
Velez was frantic.
"The neighbor called the fire department while I was screaming," he said.
Coletta jumped into the water not knowing how deep it was.
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"I had a good guy with me, he would have come and got me," he said, shrugging off the danger.
It was shallow enough, and finally Iggy came over to him.
"You could see he was exhausted, it was trudging through. His legs kept getting stuck and I think that's when he kind of said, 'I'm going to give up and come to you,'" he said.
Coletta says he's saved plenty of cats and even ducklings. But this was his first dog rescue.
