I'll try to summarize this as much as possible.

Middle of winter, all water, even a good size river were froze over. My dog went on a fast, far chase (deer I assume) and ran right up to the river. I had him on GPS so that's how I knew he went to the river. Then absolute silence and no movement. Getting through the canals and snow/ice that kept breaking under us it took us 1 1/2 hour to find him.

With no movement for that long I knew he was dead and knew he went through the ice--I just had to see the hole for myself. When we finally got there we heard him whimpering and hiding under a fir tree. The snow was melted and iced and he was soaked and shivering and crying and would not come out, he hadn't moved from that spot the whole time. He was terrified.

No holes in the ice or cracks that I could find, didn't see any lion/bear prints but there were so many animal prints I could have missed them. 100% uninjured.

Next several times hunting he wouldn't go more than 25 yards from me and preferred walking next to me. Only recently has he taken off again. Since then he also hasn't chased any deer and we've seen plenty.

No idea what could have happened there.

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hypothermia would be my guess. dogs get cold, too.