This is about drowning and hypothermia and rescue procedures. It concerns a puppy... but it could have been a child, and at sea it could have been any of us. This incident underlines vital points in boating rescue.

This February I was walking Jess (our lovably delinquent little terrier) along the River Wey Navigation (a former sailing barge route). We were crossing a footbridge over a weir when Jess jumped round its closed gate, slipped and fell in. The water was thundering over the sluice, it was like a boiling cauldron below. Jess was swirled around, one moment on the surface, the next being sucked under. She disappeared out of sight, and then I saw her faintly underwater, on her side with her mouth open. I thought we had lost her. The weir's wall was about 5 feet above the water so I couldn't reach her. There was no-one around to help, nor any pole or rope to use. I briefly considered jumping in after her, but I am 81, was heavily clad against the bitter cold, and although fit for my age never was very strong. I could no more have coped with the undertow than Jess could. Commonsense combined with cowardice. (The Golden Rule is 'never go in to rescue to become a casualty yourself'.)

I went to the end of the wall and called her as she came to the surface. She had never swum before (she hates getting wet) but she is a very fit little dog. She dog-paddled desperately towards me. Again she was sucked under but came up again, paddling more weakly now with the last of her strength. At the corner of the wall I waded in as far as I could without being swept away, grasped a sapling to lean out further, just managed to reach her and yank her out. On the bank, Jess vomited a lot of water and struggled to her feet. I picked her up and held her to me to conserve her body heat and walked the mile home (With hypothermia it is just as important to conserve energy.)

At home we warmed her and she seemed OK at first but then she coughed or vomited up more water and river debris, and seemed to be deteriorating. We rushed her to the vet (which with hindsight we should have done in the first place), who found water in her lungs and a low body temperature. Fortunately a day under the heat lamp and antibiotics against pneumonia restored her to her usual happily delinquent self. The vet told us that dog hypothermia is similar to humans' except that with dogs, hypothermia occurs sooner because of their lesser bodyweight. 'A near-death experience,' was how she described it.

Points underlined by this incident:

1. Accidents occur as much or more when people are ignorant of hazards or complacent, than when they are knowingly facing them*
2. Think before attempting a rescue. (If I had jumped in I could well have died myself and not saved Jess.)
3. Hypothermia, not drowning, is the greatest hazard in dinghy cruising.**
4. With hypothermia, aftercare is vital. Too many casualties have died hours after rescue.
5. In First Aid the knowledge is far more important than the First Aid box, and for drowning and hypothermia, our greatest hazards, up-to date knowledge is vital (since traditional methods kill) but the First Aid box is not needed at all.

* Ed Wingfield's researches for his degree dissertation 'Safety on Inland Waterways' underlined this. There have been a number of horrific inland waterway accidents. My own stepson Andy, who had a commercial licence, narrowly escaped drowning one winter.

** In warm, fairly calm water a fit person can swim for hours. Not long ago an entire crew of six swam eight miles to safety. In just one WW2 Pacific sinking several hundred sailors survived four days in the warm water. In the Arctic they would have been dead in three minutes. As for us in the DCA, we have fortunately had no deaths (I presume that the two deaths reported in early bulletins were not members), but several members have been hospitalised by hypothermia.