Lily Martin. PHOTO/FILE
KAREN COLTMAN
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A 74-year-old cyclist suffered broken bones after coming off his bike in a collision with a roaming dog on Boundary Road in Masterton on Saturday morning.
The dog had been chasing a ute down the road and then ran out in front of Rex Dowding as he was cycling home.
The small dog limped away but Dowding was taken by ambulance to Wairarapa Hospital where he was admitted with a broken hip and femur.
He was operated on Monday morning.
Rex’s wife, Dianne, missed his call about the accident because she was completing domestic chores. The first she knew about it was when the ambulance turned up at their Solway home.
“The ambulance came, and the assistants came out of it with Rex’s bike,” Dianne said.
“It is good it was not the hip he had replaced many years ago and the doctors have said the hip damaged in this accident is in good health so that is good news.”
The surgery involved using pins to hold the bones together, and was said to have gone well.
Boundary Road resident Lily Martin was the first person on the scene to help Dowding. The 23-year-old put a towel on a gash on his arm and sat with him for around 10 minutes while they waited for the ambulance.
“The elderly man had cuts on his hands and ripped, bleeding fingernails, he was in shock but talking and sitting down,” Martin said.
“I really hope he is okay, he came across as a lovely man.”
When the ambulance paramedics took over, Martin looked for the dog but it had gone through an olive grove and she lost track of it.
Martin was also the first person on the scene to help 70-year-old David Baker when he suffered serious injuries in a collision with an unladen water tanker on Ngaumutawa Road in June.
Baker was transferred to Wellington Hospital with serious injuries.
“I’m not afraid to help and not scared of blood but I think other people are,” Martin said. “I have had a bit of nursing training and this has probably helped me.”
Dowding, a member of the Athletics and Cycling Masterton club, was returning home after his club’s ride that day.
