12/23/2005

Dog Stuck to Railroad Tracks Is Rescued

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. - Ten minutes later and the Siberian husky frozen to some railroad tracks in western Wisconsin would have met an unfortunate fate. But luckily Jeremy Majorowicz, a Twin Cities construction worker, intervened.

Majorowicz spotted the gray and white dog sitting on the tracks Monday after his construction crew decided to call it a day because of the frigid temperatures. They headed into a restaurant for something to eat and when they came out an hour and a-half later, the dog was sitting in the same spot.

He approached the dog and offered it a bit of a muffin, but the animal wouldn't bite.

"I have two dogs myself, so I didn't want to leave the dog if there was something wrong," Majorowicz said, so he called the police.

Officer Tim Strand said the dog was "shivering unmercifully" when he arrived and would not come to him, so he called animal control officer Al Heyde.

Heyde hooked the dog around the neck with a catch pole in an attempt to capture the dog, but it would not budge.

"I lifted his tail and hind quarters, and saw he was literally frozen to the tracks," Strand said. "He was pretty hunkered down."

Strand pulled hard on the dog's tail, and was able to release him, but he said the dog lost a lot of hair in the process.

"He gave a heck of a whelp," he said.

What the men didn't know is that their rescue came with little time to spare. A train would be heading down the tracks within 10 minutes.

"If the dog would have seen that train I'm afraid it would have been the end of the pupster," Strand said.

The dog was transported to the Chippewa County Humane Association, where workers named him "Ice Train."

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