PRAIIE DU CHIEN, Wis. – Jennifer Clements’ dog Dexter spotted the bird out on the ice and leaped for it – and crashed through. Jennifer threw down her purse and instinctively went after Dexter and herself fell through the ice. “Am I going to die?” she remembered asking in an interview several days later with television station WKBT. Both Cements, 72, and Dexter were rescued from the Mississippi River at St. Feriole Island. She spent five hours thawing out at a hospital. Dexter too is OK. It happened, Clements said, when she and a friend were walking Dexter at the old Regal Marina. Dexter ran onto a dock as was his habit, and then jumped onto the ice to chase after a bird. Almost immediately he broke through. Clements followed. “We’re both in the water in the same hole, both hanging on to the ice,” she said. Her companion, without a phone and helpless, looked frantically for a passerby. After a few minutes, 911 was called. Two police rescuers fell in trying to save Jennifer and Dexter, but they were able to eventually get both out of the water. Police told Clements that she went under three times and they were unsure if they were going to be able to save her. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” she said. “I just felt like I might die. I was so cold, I just felt like I was frozen and said to the paramedic ‘Am I going to die’ and he didn’t answer me, I thought. ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t have asked.’”
