Dogs rescue woman hurt in fall

JEFF McEWAN/Dominion Post

FRIENDLY BREED: Linda Fowler says it was the affectionate nature of her purebred Staffies, Amba, left, and Bugsy, that made them stay with her as she lay bleeding and semi-concious after a fall on to rocks.

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An Upper Hutt woman survived a fall on to rocks and a night in the open before passing dogs found her.

The woman, 44, slipped and fell below the Bridge Rd reservoir, north of Upper Hutt, after heading to the dam for a walk late on Sunday.

She spent all night lying semi-conscious on cold rocks before being found.

Birchville resident Linda Fowler was jogging at 7.30am yesterday when her purebred Staffordshire bull terriers, Amba and Bugsy, veered off the track.

Miss Fowler kept running but the persistent howls of her dogs led her back.

"I kept calling them but they wouldn't come. They just stayed there."

The woman was dressed in black and nestled on the rocks between two trees.

"I thought she was part of the rocks. I couldn't see what the dogs were barking at.

"I was almost touching her and I realised it was a human and I thought: `Oh my god'."

The woman was drenched with spray from the dam, "yellow" with hypothermia, bleeding from the head and "burbling incoherently", she said.

She was saying: "Who are you? Where am I? What's happening?"

A MetService spokeswoman said the overnight low was 15 degrees celsius but drizzle and rain before dawn would have made it feel colder.

Miss Fowler ran a kilometre to a nearby house to raise the alarm. Another woman coming up the track with her dog went to comfort the injured woman.

The residents of the house took a tarpaulin and jackets to cover the woman till the ambulance arrived.

Acting sergeant Allister Rose, of Upper Hutt, said the woman had been reported missing by a friend on Sunday night but details were "sketchy".

Police had been waiting for more information yesterday morning when news filtered through that she had been found.

"She had been lying virtually under a waterfall all night. It's extremely lucky that she didn't perish and that the dogs found her when they did."

The woman is recovering from her injuries in Hutt Hospital.

Miss Fowler said her dogs were nothing like the Staffordshire crossbreds often featured in the media for attacks on humans. "They obviously recognised that she needed help."

New Zealand Kennel Club president Phil Lyth said it was a good day for the breed.

"Too often bad cross-breeds are mislabelled Staffies. That's a slur on good purebred dogs.

"They're a good purebred dog with an excellent temperament."

- © Fairfax NZ News