PORTER TWP. \u2013 The new year of 2026 may officially be the year of the horse, but local firefighters started off the new year by rescuing a different animal that had fallen into a frozen pond.<\/p>\n
For their first emergency response call of 2026, members of the New Bethlehem Fire Co. were dispatched to property along Rockville Road in Porter Township, where a dog belonging to the Confer family had unintentionally taken the new year\u2019s polar bear plunge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dog went out chasing ducks on the pond,\u201d firefighter Ed Goth said, noting that the dog, Rosie, fell into the icy water at the center of the pond.<\/p>\n
He said the owners, Matt Confer and his family, attempted to rescue the dog, but then called 911 for help. The call came in at 2:42 p.m.<\/p>\n
Once at the scene, Goth said he and the three other firefighters \u2014 Antonio Phillips, Barry Fox and Bruce Young \u2014 were able to pull the fire company\u2019s rescue boat around the barn to the pond, where they dragged it to the water, breaking ice to reach the dog.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, she wanted out of that water,\u201d Goth said of the ease of bringing the small dog into the rescue boat. \u201cOnce she was in, I just tried to keep her warm while they pulled the boat back in.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to posts on Facebook, Rosie was in the water for about 40 minutes before being rescued. But despite the lengthy time in the ice cold water, she appeared to be fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is all warmed up and safe now,\u201d Emily Confer posted. \u201cNo problems at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI truly thought she was not going to make it,\u201d Sarah McKee -Confer posted. \u201cWithout [firefighters], she wouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRosie is doing great now and it\u2019s as if nothing happened,\u201d she continued. \u201cStill unbelievable she was in the water for probably 40 minutes. Thank God you guys had a boat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matt Confer posted his gratitude for the fire company\u2019s response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you so much for the unbelievably fast response and fearless efforts of our firemen in the freezing cold temperatures,\u201d he wrote on Facebook. \u201cNew Bethlehem is blessed to have such a great group of volunteers protecting the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTER TWP. \u2013 The new year of 2026 may officially be the year of the horse, but local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,296],"class_list":{"0":"post-80529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-local"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}