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A woman and her dogs are recovering after falling through the ice in Mantua.

The 32-year-old Heber woman was visiting family in Honeyville when she decided to take her two dogs for a walk around Mantua Reservoir on Sunday morning. But about 9 a.m., the dogs took off onto the iced-over reservoir and fell through, said Mantua Police Chief Mike Johnson.

"The ice is barely formed up here. She decided she wanted to try to rescue them, so she went out on the ice and fell through also," Johnson said.

The woman and her dogs broke through the brittle ice about 200 feet from the shore. The water there was deep enough that she couldn't touch bottom, nor was the ice strong enough for her to pull herself out of the water.

But within a couple minutes, a Brigham City maintenance worker happened to be driving by and spotted the woman and her pets. The worker called 911, and part-time Mantua police patrolman Brad Nelson responded to the lake.

Nelson went as far as he felt safe onto the ice and threw the woman an "ice-rescue device," which is a disc on the end of a long tether to pull people toward shore, Johnson said. But it was too short.

"So he went out even further, and he could feel the ice breaking around him, and tossed it again," Johnson said. The tether reached the woman the second time, and Nelson was able to pull she and her dogs out of the water.

The woman was taken to a Brigham City hospital to be treated for hypothermia. She had been in the icy reservoir for about 10 minutes before Nelson pulled her out; a few minutes more, and she might not have made it, Johnson said.

"Someone is watching over her today," Johnson said, noting that no one besides the maintenance worker would have likely been at the reservoir at that point.

A Mantua firefighter took the dogs home to warm them up until their owner can come back for them. Johnson was unsure of their breeds, except that one looked like a mixed breed and the other like a Labrador.

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