Bob Gist and Brad Carlisle got more than they bargained for when they went fishing this past weekend on Lake Grenada in Mississippi. The two friends had just headed out with their guide, Jordan Chrestman, when they noticed something strange. Bobbing in the water was a large pack of dogs! The dogs, all wearing GPS collars and wearing numbers, were in distress and confused as to what to do.
“There were dogs everywhere,” Gist told AP News. “They were kind of swimming in circles and didn’t know which direction to go.”
The fishermen would later learn that the dogs were participating in a Fox Run but had been led astray by a deer. The dogs chased the deer into the lake but after the deer swam away and escaped, the dogs got lost and then exhausted. The concerned dogs’ owners watched helplessly from the shore until Gist, Carlisle, and Chrestman arrived.
Pulling up alongside the dogs with their small boat, the fishermen began pulling the dogs out of the water. They loaded the dogs into the boat until there was no more room. But because there were so many dogs, they had to ferry the dogs to shore several to save all the dogs. Or so they thought. Just when they figured they had rescued all the dogs one dog owner approached them and asked them to go out for one more trip. His GPS tracker revealed that four of his dogs were still in the water.
Photo of the rescue crew taken by one of the grateful dog owners.
When they got out to the location of the four dogs, the dogs were sinking underwater. The men successfully fished out the remaining dogs and once they returned to shore they realized they had saved 38 dogs in total!
Gist credits Chrestman, who runs the Tri-Lake Guide Service LLC, as being the hero for spotting the dogs in trouble. “If it wasn’t for Jordan, there would have been 38 dead dogs,” he said. He added, “Opportunities to help somebody are in front of us all the time. Sometimes if you see something, do something.”
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