(Memphis) A video posted on Facebook is getting a lot of attention.
It shows a towboat crew rescuing a dog in the middle of the Arkansas River.
The person who pulled her on-board is from Batesville, Mississippi.
It’s not something a towboat crew expects to find floating down a river: a black Labrador adrift on a pile of debris.
“It’s so cold out here,” said the pilot of the boat, John Crawford, recording the video.
In low, 30-degree weather in Fort Smith, the dog was almost entirely submerged underwater.
“Oh man! He is coming right to you!” said Crawford.
It didn’t take much coaxing to get the dog on-board. Deckhand Sam Horton from Batesville was the one who grabbed her.
“That water was freezing and she had been in there so long, the bottomed of her feet were pruned,” said Horton. “When I pulled her out of the water she couldn’t even move anymore. We brought her inside the boat. Got her dried off and warmed-up.”
In fact, Horton says on-board it was steak night, with rib eyes and the works; a Saturday tow-boat tradition!
“A couple of guys gave her half their steaks,” said Horton. “She was in pretty good shape then.”
Horton says the crew kept her for two days until they came across an Arkansas dock worker.
He heard the story of the dog’s rescue and wanted to keep her, “We gave her to the dock worker in Van Buren who said he was going to make her a house dog.”
A house dog from a river dog, rescued by men on a big boat with even bigger hearts.
The crew says they named the dog “May” after the W.D. Mayo Lock and Dam near the section of the river where they found her.