<\/p>\n
An afternoon hike near Transfer Campground in the San Juan National Forest quickly turned harrowing for two teens who risked life and limb to save a drowning dog.<\/p>\n
Kaela and Mason Blackmon, Macon, Ga., natives, were on a hike near Transfer Campground- roughly 7 north of Mancos State Park- with their grandmother, a family friend and her dogs.<\/p>\n
As one of the dogs jumped on some rocks in the raging creek at least 10 feet wide and deep, a current swept its legs out from under it. The 8-year-old yellow lab was stuck in a whirlpool.<\/p>\n
That was when 15-year-old Mason and 16-year-old Kaela jumped into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d try to get closer, and the current would push you back out, and the water was freezing, at least 32 degrees,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to work my way around the outside. The dog had on a collar, so when I got over to her, I grabbed her by the collar, and then collar came off.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Mason worked to get the dog out of the whirlpool, Kaela helped the dog\u2019s owner safely back to shore.<\/p>\n
Perhaps channeling the cowboy ethos of Mancos, Mason eventually made a lasso out of the dog leash and attempted to rope the dog and pull her in. After a 45-minute struggle, it worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used it out instinct. We\u2019re both extreme animal lovers, so we didn\u2019t really even think we just jumped in the water when we knew she had fallen,\u201d said Kaela. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know how to do anything with the best we had and we had very little.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia natives use lasso to reel her in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-111356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111356"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=111356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}