Public TV host dives in icy lake to save a drowning hound
Roy Underhill, host of the public TV how-to program The Woodwright's Shop, earned a new claim to fame last month when he swam through icy water to save a hound dog that was about to drown.
The dog had wandered off during a hunting trip with its owner on New Year's Day and roamed for three weeks when he fell through thin ice on Lake Powell in James City, Va. The hound was unable to pull himself back onto the ice or break through it, and his struggles attracted a crowd of some 30 people who stopped their cars on a causeway over the lake, Underhill recalled.
"It was exactly as if Spielberg had cast them — everybody from all walks of life.''
Underhill, who writes for a living when he's not cutting wood on-camera for North Carolina's UNC-TV Network, saw the commotion from his home on a hill above the lake. Through a telescope he uses to view wildlife, he saw the dog struggling.
He went out with a ladder that was to help spread his weight over the ice. "The ice was too thin to support a human with a ladder, at least this human.'' Underhill's ladder broke through the ice, and, as the crowd considered other ways to rescue the hound, the animal began to fade.
"It just got to be real obvious the dog was not going to make it,'' Underhill said. "People were getting desperate.''
Underhill scrambled out on the ladder, which dunked him into the water about three-quarters of the way out to the floundering animal. "I started bashing through the ice ahead of me with my fist.'' Just as he grabbed the white hound dog, it began to go under.
All of the junior lifesaving techniques he learned as a teenager came back to Underhill, and he scissor-kicked his way back to shore, pulling the hound by the scruff of his neck. Before he knew it, there were "so many hands on this dog and blankets going around him. He was whisked away pretty fast.''
Bystanders offered to take Underhill to the hospital, but he turned them down. He had a root canal scheduled in 20 minutes.
"I'd never met him before, but Roy Underhill is a hero in my eyes,'' passerby Jerry McCardle told the Virginia Gazette. "If he'd do that for a dog, just think what he'd do for a human.''
"The story here is that Roy Underhill is a legitimate hero.''
Animal control officer Shirley Anderson rushed the animal to a nearby veterinary clinic. "The dog was in shock,'' she told the Gazette. "It was trembling and ice-cold to the touch.''
Despite a speedy recovery, the dog's life was still threatened by the prospect of being put to sleep. It wore no tags, and was sent to the pound when no one claimed him.
Fortunately the Gazette helped bring the story to a happy ending. The dog's owner saw him pictured on the paper's front page and picked him up from the pound. The hound is called "Whitey,'' and now is officially retired from hunting, according to Underhill.
Underhill called the episode "no big deal,'' but said it reminded him of the heroic acts he used to read about in Boy's Life magazine.
In an odd way, Whitey helped rescue Underhill from his own internal struggle. Before he peered at the accident down the hill, he'd been sitting at his desk, trying to overcome writer's block. He needed a plot twist for a historical fiction novel about Jupiter, a slave to Thomas Jefferson who, Underhill imagines, was "exposed to discussions of the most intellectual people of his world'' and "picked up on the stuff all his life.'' Because of racism of the times and Jefferson's own views, Jupiter was unable to communicate his ideas until ... he rescues a dog from drowning. Suddenly, "everyone becomes concerned about his welfare.''
Web page originally posted Feb. 11, 1996
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