RUMFORD – For what seemed like forever Friday morning, Mary Ann Prue and her daughter’s 13-year-old golden retriever both endured a traumatic ordeal when the dog fell through the ice in her liner-covered in-ground swimming pool.

“I was so shook up this morning,” Prue said, watching Calvin as the exhausted dog, who suffers from arthritis, glaucoma and hearing loss, tried to rest while sprawled atop a blanket spread on the carpeted living room floor. A white towel was draped over his hindquarters, which trembled from time to time.

Prue, the Oxford County treasurer, has been babysitting Calvin since Wednesday when her daughter, Pam Settle, of Brunswick dropped him off. Settle and her husband and their son left early Friday morning for Miami to attend Sunday’s New England Patriots-Miami Dolphins football game.

About four hours later, Calvin went through the ice.

Prue said she let him out at 9 a.m. into her fenced-in backyard at 307 Swain Rd. The pool was covered by a few inches of snow. The dog had never gone near the pool before, so the potential hazard never entered her mind.

Tracks showed where Calvin had walked under the pool’s slide, then slid down into the pool and onto the ice-covered liner. The dog walked a short ways before breaking through the ice in the deep end.

While making coffee, Prue chanced to look up, and saw Calvin struggling.

“I said, ‘Oh my God!’ “

She ran out and tried to get the 70-pound dog out, but he was too heavy, and then she worried that she’d fall in, too.

“It was a very scary moment. It was about 15 degrees out and the wind was blowing, and I just could not get him out. He was just shaking all over and crying, and he just laid there, and couldn’t move. He was scared to death,” Prue said.

She tried to coax him out, but Calvin’s arthritic hind legs kept collapsing under him.

She ran back inside to call for help, but, unknown to Prue, there was an all-day problem with the telephone system in Rumford, Mexico and Dixfield that affected land lines and cell phones.

“I had three phones, and I was trying to get somebody and couldn’t. I couldn’t believe it. How bad can your luck be? I was getting so desperate,” she said.

Calvin was in the icy water for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Growing increasingly panicky, she thought about driving down to the Rumford Fire Department. But then she got through to the department. A crew of Rumford firefighters rushed over from a training session in Mexico.

Mark Tripp arrived first. He said the initial call was that the dog was under the liner, so he grabbed a life vest.

“I made the decision to grab a life jacket – there wasn’t time to put on a coldwater suit – and jump in and get him,” Tripp said.

But when he saw that Calvin was atop the liner and about halfway out in the pool, Tripp laid on the edge, leaned out over the water and grabbed Calvin’s collar. He pulled the exhausted retriever to the side, lifted and carried him into Prue’s house.

Rumford firefighter Ed Carey, who lives a short way up the street, arrived next, and they got hot packs under the dog, and applied a microwave-heated towel.

“He was shivering bad. I felt his paws, and they were freezing, but after about five minutes, the shaking slowed down,” Tripp said.

Later, a worried Prue took Calvin to a Rumford veterinarian to be examined. “He’s OK. He’s not in shock, and he doesn’t have pneumonia,” she said after returning home.

Tripp, contacted late Friday night, said Prue should have dialed 911 instead of trying to call the department’s business line.

“If it’s bad enough that you’re calling us, call 911. It speeds the process up,” he said.