Elisha Anderson, Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
5:04 PM, Mar. 17, 2011
Bella, a Great Dane, was rescued off the ice of Lake Huron on Wednesday, March 16, and reunited with her owners the next day.
A 1 1/2 year old Great Dane found in Lake Huron was reunited with her owners this afternoon.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the dog—named Bella— around 11 p.m. Wednesday night.
The family pet had been missing since early Tuesday morning when she ran from her house in Sarnia, Ontario. Shawn Byatt, 31, told the Free Press that he and his wife Emma Byatt, 29, had spent more than two days frantically looking for their 125-pound dog that stood just under three feet tall.
Bella was wearing a tag with her name, and it also included her owners’ address and phone number, but the tag broke off when Shawn Byatt tried to catch the dog as she took off. It cut his finger in the process, he said.
Shawn Byatt said he went through two tanks of gas and spent $50 making missing dog posters trying to track her down. He passed the posters out in his neighborhood, at pet supply stores, and on cars in parking lots, but nobody had seen her. He was hanging up a poster at a local coffee shop when his wife got the call their pet had been rescued.
“We couldn’t believe it,” he told the Free Press today. “We really didn’t think there was going to be a happy ending.”
Lucky for his family, crew members aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bristol Bay spotted the dog as the ship was escorting a freighter through the ice. She was found about five miles off the Michigan coastline, two miles north of the Blue Water Bridge.
The captain parked the ship in the ice and deployed the ice rescue team, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Justin Westmiller.
“We’ve rescued dogs in the past, but it hasn’t happened lately,” Westmiller said.
Bella was kept on the ship overnight and turned over to the St. Clair County Animal Control Office this morning, he said. She had redness in her paws from standing on the ice but was in good health.
“The dog would have been able to walk on the ice from the Sarnia side and literally walk across to the United States side,” Westmiller said.
The St. Clair County Animal Control Office hadn’t received any calls for the animal, so they called the Sarnia Animal Control Office, and the owners were located. They came to get her this afternoon.
“It never even occurred to us to look across the border,” Shawn Byatt said.
To Bella rescuers, Shawn Byatt wants to offer “a huge thank you.”
Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20110317/NEWS05/110317048/Lost-Great-Dane-found-Lake-Huron-ice-reunited-owners?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
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