Spotting a dog struggling to stay afloat in an icy Vermont river, Chris MacRitchie never hesitated.

He jumped into the frigid waters and waded over to the dog, gently pulling it ashore where his wife, Erica, draped it with a sweatshirt. The dramatic rescue of the dog Friday afternoon in Berlin, Vermont, was caught on video by his son and has been shared widely on social media.

MacRitchie’s son, Ace, first spotted the dog as they were going through the drive-thru of a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. When they reached the river embankment, the father of two felt he had no choice but to save the pooch.

“It was like one of those moments everyone probably has in their life like you’re going to make a decision … either trying to get in the water and help her or the alternative,” MacRitchie said. “So, I felt I was obligated to at least try to fetch this dog out of the river, as I have two dogs myself, and I would hope someone would do that for them if they were in that spot.”

The video shows MacRitchie — dressed in a T-shirt, sweats and boots — approaching the river embankment as the dog struggles to get out. He calls out to the dog at first and his wife, Erica, can be heard encouraging him to rescue it.

MacRitchie gingerly steps through the ice and into the river, audibly gasping as he wades about 20-feet toward the dog, which was on the other side of the frozen tributary of the Winooski River. His wife repeatedly shouts “c’mon” to the dog and exclaims “Oh, my God” as MacRitchie lifts the dog, later identified as Arizona, out of the water and onto the icy embankment. He carries it over to his wife.

“The only real stress I had about it wasn’t getting in the cold water. It was the depth. I did not know if it was 20 feet deep or it was 2 feet deep,” MacRitchie said. “When I broke through and I got on my feet and it was like waist high, I was actually relieved by that. In my mind, during the moment, I thought, OK this isn’t that bad. Yeah, it’s cold, but I feel this is a very doable situation.”

After retrieving the dog, MacRitchie called the dog’s owner, Morgan Cerasoli, whose number was listed on the dog tag.

Cerasoli said she had been looking for her dog, a seven-year-old mutt who had originally been rescued from the side of the road in South Carolina, since Thursday. She was heading to pick up her daughter from school, when she got the call from MacRitchie who said he had “pulled a drowning dog” out of the river.” He wanted to confirm it was her dog.

“I started crying, and I told him, oh, my God, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Let me pull a U-turn and I’m coming right back,” she said, as she sat beside Arizona during an interview. She said the dog has mostly recovered, though a checkup did find it was suffering from Lyme disease.

After reuniting with her dog, Cerasoli said she saw the video and was brought to tears again — over MacRitchie’s exploits as well as the poor condition of Arizona in that moment.

“It’s brave, it’s selfless, it’s commendable. It’s everything that I think that we were on this Earth to be,” she said of the rescue. “Sometimes it feels like that’s very rare these days.”

A lawsuit filed this week accuses Vermont’s child welfare agency of using baseless allegations about a pregnant woman’s mental health to secretly investigate her and win custody of her daughter before the baby’s birth.

The ACLU of Vermont and Pregnancy Justice, a national advocacy group, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday against the Vermont Department for Children and Families, a counseling center and the hospital where the woman gave birth in February 2022.

In the lawsuit, the state also faces accusations that it routinely tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable to be mothers.

The lawsuit asks for unspecified monetary damages for the woman, who is identified only by her initials, A.V., and an end to what it describes as an illegal surveillance program.

PREGNANT WOMAN AND BABY SAVED AFTER DOCTORS FIND GRAPEFRUIT-SIZED TUMOR: ‘EXTREMELY RARE’

The director of a homeless shelter where A.V. stayed in January 2022 told the child welfare agency that she appeared to have untreated paranoia, dissociative behaviors and PTSD, according to the lawsuit. The state began investigating and eventually spoke to the woman’s counselor, midwife and a hospital social worker without her knowledge, even though it had no jurisdiction over fetuses.

The woman remained unaware of the probe until she gave birth and her daughter was immediately taken away, according to ACLU senior staff attorney Harrison Stark.

A.V. had no knowledge that hospital officials were giving updates to the state while she was in labor, including details of her cervix dilation, and that she had lost temporary custody of her baby. The state even sought a court order forcing the woman to undergo a cesarean section, although it was rendered moot because she agreed to the surgery.

The woman was not able to win full custody of her child until seven months later.

“It’s a horrific set of circumstances for our client,” Stark said. “It’s also clear from what has happened that this is not the first time the agency has done this. We have learned from several confidential sources that DCF has a pattern and practice of looking into folks like our client who are pregnant, who are of interest to the agency based on a set of unofficial criteria and who the agency is tracking on what is called a ‘high risk pregnancy docket’ or ‘high risk pregnancy calendar.’”

Department for Children and Families commissioner Chris Winter said the agency will not comment until officials have reviewed the lawsuit and investigated its accusations.

“We take our mission of protecting children and supporting families seriously and work hard to balance the safety and well-being of children with the rights of parents,” he said.

Officials at Lund counseling center, which was named as a defendant, said they learned of the allegations from news reports.

The ACLU of Vermont and Pregnancy Justice filed the lawsuit on Wednesday against the Vermont Department for Children and Families, a counseling center and the hospital where the woman gave birth. (Getty Images )

“We take these matters very seriously and we are actively working to gather more information to understand the situation fully,” interim CEO Ken Schatz said.

Copley Hospital has not commented on the lawsuit.

Several states across the country allow the civil commitment of pregnant women to take custody of a newborn, Pregnancy Justice senior staff attorney Kulsoom Ijaz said. However, it is unclear how common these situations are in the U.S.

Ijaz said what happened to A.V. shows how pregnancy is increasingly used as a justification to block people’s rights.

The organization released a report in September detailing an increase in women being charged with pregnancy-related crimes in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to make their own laws regarding abortion. Most of those cases, in which the baby was listed as the victim, included women charged with child abuse, neglect or endangerment over allegations of substance use during pregnancy.

SMOKING AND VAPING HAVE THESE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS ON FERTILITY, DOCTORS WARN

This photograph shows the logo of the American Civil Liberties Union. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images)

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“What DCF did here is incredibly cruel,” Ijaz said. “It’s discriminatory. Its state sanctioned surveillance and stalking, and it violates Vermont’s newly enshrined right to reproductive autonomy in its state constitution. This is an opportunity for Vermont to signal to other states, as a leader, and say that these rights don’t just exist on paper. They exist in practice, too.”

Stark said the allegations in Vermont are particularly troubling since the state has described itself as a haven for reproductive rights.

“To discover evidence that a state agency is essentially colluding with certain medical providers to collect information without folks’ knowledge or consent and expanding its jurisdiction unlawfully to investigate folks based on what are essentially decisions about their own reproductive health is incredibly alarming,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.