Dog Saves Impaled Woman
From Fark.com
Dog comes to rescue of woman impaled by tree branch
22.10.2004 2.00 pm
Murdoch the mongrel from the SPCA and his border collie mate Grubby are the heroes of the house in the small settlement of Kaukapakapa northwest of Auckland.
Between them the two young dogs probably saved the life of their owner, Auckland nurse Michelle Trainor last week after she fell down a 50 metre high bank and a branch pierced her chest.
For four hours 14-week-old Grubby stayed with her at the bottom of the bank, keeping her warm and giving her strength as she lay in the rain, semi-conscious, in shock and with a tree branch sticking out of her chest.
After a few hours, possibly three, she heard her cellphone ringing halfway down the bank where it had fallen out as she fell and sent eight-month-old Murdoch after it.
"Blow me down, he comes trotting back. He went halfway up the hill and comes trotting back with this phone in his mouth -- tail straight up in the air wagging, -- you know look at me, look at me, with this bloody cellphone in his mouth. I just couldn't believe it.
"I heard him snuffling around. I didn't think he would bring it back."
After he spat it out at her feet, Miss Trainor, 33, called her husband, Lee Bird, who had already called police after arriving home to find the door open and his wife's bag on the table.
"I started crying by that stage. I had had enough. I had been there for four hours and I said come and get me now."
She told her husband where she was but at 9pm in the dark he couldn't find her.
"I told him to call the dog and Murdoch went ripping up there, went running to him and brought him down to where I was."
Kaukapakapa volunteer firefighters and paramedics arrived and after a "hell of a job getting me back up the top," she was taken to North Shore Hospital and later transferred to Middlemore.
Miss Trainor, a nurse, told NZPA from her home the saga began about 5pm when she took the two dogs for a walk.
As they walked beside the bank the playful Murdoch gave Grubby a nudge and he went over the bank.
"As I walked up to see if she was all right, she was coming up over the edge. But it gave way. It was 50 metres (high) and I ended up at the bottom. I got impaled on a branch at the bottom right through the chest.
"It hit the ribs and stopped, fortunately.
"I ended up pulling it out because it was excruciating.
"I was pretty much in shock. I had been knocked out and there were lots of other cuts and bruises. There was a lot of blood when I woke up."
Later in hospital she was told if the branch had gone a centimetre or two either way it could have pierced her lung or heart.
"It could have been a hell of a lot worse."
She lay at the bottom of the cliff for at least three hours before she heard her cellphone ringing as her frantic husband tried to find her.
She had earlier tried to send at least one of the dogs home to alert her husband but from the time she fell until she was winched up the hill in a stretcher, Grubby refused to leave her.
"She just sat by me the whole time and wouldn't move. She just sat there right up against me."
She said she believed Grubby stayed with her because she knew something was wrong.
"I had the shakes and had lost a bit of blood."
Miss Trainor said she was resigned to at least spending the night in the open as she lay in shock, lightly dressed in the wet undergrowth.
She said as a nurse she thought later she should have left the broken 15cm diameter branch in her chest instead of pulling it out.
"It was just such excuciating pain. I have never been stabbed but I assume that's what it felt like."
She said her two dogs were her heroes.
"I knew Murdoch was clever but he has never been a retriever.
"I said 'go and get the phone, get the phone, find the phone, find the phone', quite panicky."
She said the two dogs were her best friends and Murdoch, her "mongrel from the SPCA" got a big cuddle and kiss when he came back with the cellphone.
Miss Trainor has an appointment at Middlemore next week and said she would need another operation to repair the damage.
