What an example of love and dedication…
It shows how much our pets mean to us.
A beautiful women, mother and wife, I am sure they are walking the green field together!
Three months after Amanda Richmond Rogers disappeared while trying to rescue her dog from an icy Alaska river, her body was found with him in her arms.
Amanda was 45, a mother of four sons, and an emergency room and pediatric hospice nurse.
To her family, she was Mandy.
On Dec. 23, 2023, Amanda and her husband, Brian Rogers, were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary. They took two of their dogs for a walk near the North Fork of Eagle River, one of Amanda’s favorite places.
They had planned a date and a night away together afterward.
While the dogs played, the couple stopped to enjoy the winter scenery.
Then Groot approached a small opening in the ice to get a drink.
He fell into the water.
Brian rushed in first. Holding onto the edge, he reached beneath the ice, trying to find their dog in the darkness.
He couldn’t reach him.
When Brian climbed out and moved downstream to look again, he turned and saw Amanda entering the river.
He called out to her.
Before he could get back to the opening, he saw her swimming downstream beneath the ice. Then she [di.sappe.ared] from view.
She never resurfaced.
Search teams brought helicopters, divers, drones, search dogs and underwater equipment to the river. Freezing conditions made their work difficult, and the active search was eventually suspended.
The family was left waiting.
On March 24, 2024, a passerby discovered remains near the North Fork Trailhead. The medical examiner identified Amanda, and her sister, Jennifer Richmond, told Alaska’s News Source that she had been found holding Groot in her arms.
Brian had already explained what their dogs meant to Amanda.
“She did not jump in to save ‘just a dog,’ it was a family member.”
At her celebration of life, family, friends, colleagues and former patients gathered to remember her. They spoke about a woman who cared for [su.ffe.ring] children, loved the outdoors and put her family at the center of her life.
Her sons remembered their mother’s love.
Her husband wanted people to remember her kindness.
Amanda’s story ended in the river, but the people who knew her remembered much more—a mother, a nurse, and someone whose love extended to the animals who shared her home.
So sad, but in the end she found her fur baby and they crossed rainbow bridge together.
Must have been an awesome human to love her fur baby like that! 
Any of us who love dogs understand this [sa.crif.ice].
