Alaska man’s dog keeps him warm, finds help after snowmachine accident

Otis Orth, 52, is lucky to be alive. His hero: Amber, his 15-month old golden retriever.

"I owe that dog my life," he told the Anchorage Daily News last week.

On March 2nd, the Alaskan man was making a trip into Trapper Creek with his dog to get groceries and supplies when he was thrown almost 50 feet from his snowmachine.

"I tried to take a shortcut and ran into a hollow snow drift and that kind of kicked the back end of the snowmachine forward, and I went over the handlebars and slid for about 30 or 40 feet on my face and back," Orth told Alaska Dispatch from his hospital bed at Providence Alaska Medical Center last Tuesday morning. "It was kind of happening in slow motion, and I was thinking, 'This has got to stop pretty soon.' And when it did stop, Amber came running over to me. I couldn't move but I could talk to her, and she was licking my face."

Orth managed to roll over onto his back but could do little else to help himself. His shoulder was dislocated. He knew "something was wrong" with his arms and legs. His face was cut and bleeding.

"I was laying on my left side with my left arm sticking out behind me, my right arm sticking out in front of me, and I couldn’t move," he told KTNA.

As the sun set and temperatures dipped well below freezing, Amber took care of her owner, lying next to him with her head on his stomach. Her body heat helped him survive the night in the cold.

"I could feel a little heat coming from her body on my right arm and across my body," Orth said.

The next day, Amber stayed by Orth's side, scaring off a curious raven — "I was worried about my eyes," Orth said of the menacing-looking bird hovering above him — and keeping watch over him.

In the early afternoon, the man and his dog heard snowmachines in the distance.

"I heard a couple snowmachines coming. They weren't very far away, so I psyched Amber up: 'Go get 'em, girl! Go see who's out there!'" Orth said.

Amber did just as she was told.

Brothers Tom and Maynard Taylor had just passed Orth's abandoned snowmachine when Amber started barking after them.

"Then this dog came after us and I thought, 'Oh, I don’t want the dog trailing us,' so I sped up," Tom Taylor said. "But the dog stayed with us and kept barking."

Taylor slowed down to watch Amber run to a spot about 100 feet from Orth's snowmachine. The men followed the dog off the trail to find Orth, who had been lying in the snow for more than a day.

"This is a pretty tough guy to survive that night," Tom Taylor said. "When we got up in the morning it was two below and he wasn’t wearing a lot of gear. I was amazed."

The brothers called the Alaska State Troopers and reported on Orth's situation. Local cabin owners offered a generator and hair dryer to warm Orth's wet clothes. An ambulance arrived soon after.

Late that afternoon, about 26 hours after the crash, a LifeMed Alaska helicopter airlifted Orth to the hospital in Anchorage. Even during the helicopter rescue, Amber didn't want to leave Orth's side.

And while Orth thanked the Taylors, the helicopter pilot and Alaska State Troopers and everyone else involved in his rescue, Tom Taylor believes the real hero is Amber:

"I told him – I said, 'I think your dog saved your life.'"

Amber is now being cared for by a family friend as Orth receives treatment, including surgery to fuse three vertebrae, for his injuries.

Last Tuesday, Amber visited Orth in hospital.