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On 15 December 2025, a large dog broke through the ice of a pond in St. Charles Township, Illinois, and could not get out.
He was first reported as a husky. He is an Alaskan malamute, about 100 pounds, with the classic grey, black and white coat and a dark mask. His name is Flash — and he is not the Flash who spent years at Dogs Trust in the UK. This is a different dog, and a different kind of cold.
By the time firefighters reached him, he was in hypothermic shock. His body temperature had dropped below 90°F. A dog that size can look powerful even in the water, but the ice does not care, and neither does the clock.
A crawl across the ice
Firefighter Michael Amacher of Fox River and Countryside Fire/Rescue crawled out on the frozen pond to get to him. The pictures from that afternoon are simple and hard to forget: a person in a yellow suit, flat on the ice, a wet malamute in a dark hole, a gloved hand reaching forward.
Getting a 100-pound soaking dog out of a broken pond is not a cinematic lift. It is slow, heavy work, and it has to be done without putting more people through the ice. The crew got Flash onto solid ground and off the water, and then the second clock started: warming a body that had already gone far too cold.
The long warming
Flash was taken to Dundee Animal Hospital of Elgin. The vet team worked to bring his temperature up, wrapping him, watching the lines, staying with a dog who had nearly been lost in a hole in the ice. One of the later local stories put it bluntly: he had been frozen, and they had to bring him back.
He lived. That sentence is the whole turn, and it was not guaranteed. When he was stable enough to leave the hospital, he went to Animal House Shelter in Huntley, still a rescue dog, still a malamute who had fallen through a pond, not yet anyone’s dog on a sofa.
A family in Woodstock
In the new year, Shaw Local and the Kane County Chronicle told the next chapter. Flash was adopted by Kate and Mitch Parisek of Woodstock. A photograph provided by Kate shows the couple with Flash, dry and thick-coated, the dog who had been in the hole now looking like himself again.
That picture is the end of the journey, and it belongs in the record. It should not be confused with the hour on the ice, or with the first night at the hospital. The beginning is the broken pond, the crawl, and a body temperature that had dropped below 90°F.
What the ice almost took
People walk dogs near frozen water every winter, and most of those walks end without a headline. Flash’s did not. A malamute that heavy, once the ice gives way, cannot simply scramble out. He needed a firefighter willing to crawl, a hospital willing to spend the hours it takes to warm a large dog safely, and a shelter willing to hold him until a family said yes.
Kate and Mitch said yes. The couch came later. The pond came first.
If you live near ice this winter, the useful end of Flash’s story is not only that he was adopted. It is that someone saw a dog in the water and went out to get him, and that the next call you make, if you ever see the same thing, should be the same kind of call.
From a hole in a frozen Illinois pond to a home in Woodstock, Flash got a second chance because a crew treated the ice as an emergency, not as a scene.
Story retold from public reporting. Credit: Fox River and Countryside Fire/Rescue, Dundee Animal Hospital of Elgin, Animal House Shelter, and Shaw Local / Kane County Chronicle. Photos are the property of their owners and appear only with permission; they were used here as reference for the facts, not as published images.
