ohmidog!

A California man who tried to rescue his dog from crashing 12-foot-high waves drowned when he was pulled more than a half-mile out to sea at  Point Reyes National Seashore on New Year’s day.

Charles Quaid, 59, was walking along the beach with his wife when a large wave swept his dog into the ocean.

Quaid’s wife was also swept into the ocean at one point, but she was rescued by bystanders, and the dog managed to get back to shore on its own.

Quaid’s body was recovered in the ocean four hours later, after a search by helicopters and rescue teams from the fire department, U.S. Coast Guard, and National Park Service, according to ABC.

Quaid, who lived in Richmond, was described by his co-workers at a health care consulting firm as “a wonderful man” who “believed very passionately in everyone’s right to have equal access to health care.”

“He had a sense of our appreciation for what we’re doing here,” David Lansky, chief executive officer of Pacific Business Group on Health, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “One of his employees said this morning that he’d never in 30 years had a boss who he’d respected as much … He was honest and earnest and had integrity first and foremost.”

Quaid’s wife and dog were not injured.

The rough surf off the northern California coast claimed three other lives in November when a teenager and his mother and father were swept out to sea trying to rescue their family dog near Big Lagoon. An older daughter and the family dog survived.

A Massachusetts couple drowned Monday after jumping off their pontoon boat to save their dog in Hampton Ponds.

Police said Daniel Cyr, 64, jumped in the pond to retrieve the couple’s West Highland terrier, Sadie, who had leapt off the boat.

Patricia Cyr, 61, went into the water– even though she couldn’t swim — to help her husband as he struggled in the water with the dog.

Daniel Cyr died at the scene while his wife passed away at a nearby hospital later Monday, the Boston Globe reported.

The dog, who survived, had been given to the couple by Daniel Cyr’s sister six weeks ago to replace a dog who had died a year ago. Sadie will be returned to the sister.

A North Dakota woman died trying to save her dog from the Sheyenne River.

Thirty-eight-year-old Jodi Kvien Opatz of Valley City called authorities Friday morning, asking for help getting her spaniel out of the river, near the Little Dam.

Dispatchers told her to wait for help to arrive, but Kvien Opatz said she was going to try to save the dog, said Valley City Fire Chief Gary Retterath.

“It was almost like a family member or a kid to her,” Ratterath told DL-Online. “You risk your life for someone you love, and she loved (the dog). I guess I believe that is what went through her mind.”

While crews were retrieving the woman’s body, the dog managed to pull itself out of the river, Retterath said.

Once the woman’s body was pulled from the river, the dog jumped back in and drowned.

“By the time we got to it, it was too late,” Retterath said. “It got into the undercurrent of the dam.”

(Photo: From the Facebook page of Jodi Kvien Opatz)

A longtime Mansfield, Ohio, city worker drowned Sunday afternoon while trying to save a dog he thought needed help.

Jeff Bard, 46, leaned over his pontoon boat to place a life jacket on the Chesapeake Bay retriever and fell into the 41-degree water of Clear Fork Reservoir.

“We do believe he drowned due to the shock of the cold water,” said Gary Foster, operations supervisor at the reservoir. “It’ll hit you right away.”

As it turned out the dog, named “Maggie,” apparently wasn’t in danger.

Her owner Lance Cooke, 37, said the dog wandered off while he was duck hunting. While he didn’t witness the incident, he said Maggie was probably just swimming, as she had been all afternoon. Another hunter told him Bard had drowned trying to get her out of the water.

“It confused me — like why would someone be trying to get her out? She wasn’t drowning,” Cooke told the Mansfield News Journal.

Bard had worked for the city for 19 years.

“I’m still in shock pretty much,” Cooke said. “He was a really caring person and an all-around good guy, as you can see from today.”

The search continued yesterday for Gollum, a small Italian Greyhound whose owner died trying to save him and her other two dogs from an icy pond in Texas.

Police say the other two dogs and their owner, Andrea Benua, drowned in the pond Monday.

Gollum is believed not to have dronwned,but he disappeared after the accident. Benua’s family and friends are trying to find him, they say, because it’s what Benua would have wanted. Benua and her husband had no children, only the dogs, WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth reports.

Benua frequently donated to animal shelters and her friends and family asked that anyone wishing to honor her memory do the same.

Vasily Fedorouk, an internationally acclaimed sculptor, drowned Sunday after saving his dog, Era, from Horsetail Lake, outside Chicago.

The 2 1/2 -year-old German hunting terrier went into the lake to fetch a ball but got caught in some vegetation. Fedorouk, 59, jumped into the lake and freed the dog, but wound up getting entangled himself, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“He was waving his hands in the water,” his wife, Dilbara Arapova said. “At first I thought he was joking. Then he went underwater and I started to scream. I couldn’t help him. I can’t swim.”

Another man at the scene, who also couldn’t swim, called police on a cell phone. By the time police and paramedics arrived, eight minutes later, Arapova said, it was too late.

Fedorouk was found submerged in 6 to 8 feet of water. An official with the Cook County medical examiner’s office said Fedorouk died of accidental drowning. Arapova said police told her that Fedorouk apparently got caught in fishing line.

On Monday, Arapova and her son, Anton Fedorouk, 24, described the sculptor as a hardworking, passionate artist. “He would work from sunup to sundown on his sculptures,” Arapova said. “That was his passion. He would want to be remembered for his art. He told me that after he dies, his art will still live on forever.”

Fedorouk, who immigrated to the United States with his wife from Ukraine in 1992, attended the Lviv Academy of the Arts, in Lviv Ukraine, in the mid-1970s.

Anton Fedorouk was not surprised that his father risked his life for Era. “He loved our dog. He would do anything to save it.”

(Photo from vasilyfedorouk.com)