Woman Saves Dog; Dog Saves Woman; 
Woman Saves Dog Again (Are You Getting All This?)

March 16, 2001
Waranga, Victoria, Australia

The main Waranga irrigation channel at Restdown Road is certainly no place for a leisurely swim, with its turbulent water and imposing sluice gates.  And of course that was never the intention of either the 28-year-old woman or her 10-year old Staffordshire.

But somehow they both ended up in it.

When the woman from Queensland (who has declined to be identified) and her dog (who has also declined) were walking along the edge of the channel, the dog slipped and fell in.

The dog, who was unaccustomed to water, began to panic and tried to swim to the opposite bank, but suddenly disappeared under the water. 

The woman's immediate reaction was to dive in and save her dog; she later indicated that the water at that point looked flat and calm.  But almost immediately she got into trouble herself.

When she opened her eyes underwater to locate her dog, she saw nothing but a deep, murky brown.  So disoriented, she was not prepared for the thrashing that was about to come.

"Then the water just grabbed me," she said.  "I was pulled under the water; then I was rolled around, and everything was black.

"I hit my head—it smashed into what felt like concrete.  My shoulders, neck, arms and legs... everything was hurting."

"I didn't think I'd get out—I had no idea if whatever was pulling me along had an opening big enough for me to go through or whether I would be sucked against the concrete wall and drowned."

She had, in fact, just been sucked through the sluice gates and into the next irrigation channel.

Bruised, exhausted and still caught in the water's pull, the woman was terrified.  "I honestly thought I was going to die," she later recounts.

But in an ironic turnabout, now it was her dog (who had also survived being sucked through the gate) that was going to save her.

She describes, "I was pretty weak by then, but then I saw my dog against the side wall, and I managed to get to her and hang on to her."

Though shaking and terrified, the dog managed to keep them both afloat, despite the threatening currents that were sucking them both back toward the concrete.

But by this time, a friend had arrived at the scene to fish them out.  The owner was able to help hoist her dog up over the wall, and then she was pulled out herself.

Aside from some bruises and scratches, both dog and woman are reported to be ok.

§§§

^Articles