MEADOW VISTA — Kathy Duesing has found a guardian angel in Louis Zirelli.

Duesing credits Zirelli with saving her life earlier this month after she fell into the Bear River canal, a swiftly moving stretch of water that borders an easement road by her house.

On the morning of June 18, Duesing, 61, took Muffin, her 14-year-old yellow lab, out for what she thought would be a quick walk before heading up to Portland, Ore., to see her daughter and grandson. Duesing had just started walking Muffin on a leash — the dog has medical problems and Duesing wanted to slow her pace a little.

“Up until that morning she had never been on a leash,” she said Sunday.

Duesing’s intent wasn’t to let Muffin go for a big swim, which she’s done in the past, but “just to get her paws wet and her tummy wet.”

Duesing said she walked down one of the short ramps leading into the canal with Muffin, and when Muffin went farther into the water than Duesing had planned, she grabbed the dog’s leash.

“I don’t know if she pulled me in or the current swept us both in,” she said. “I panicked, because I don’t swim.”

Duesing doesn’t remember letting go of Muffin’s leash, but she does remember grabbing on to some blackberry branches creeping over the side of the canal wall.

“I just said ‘Help,’” she said. “I never thought to say, ‘I’m in the canal!’”

Zirelli, 39, was dropping his daughter and son off at the nearby Live Oak Waldorf School when he heard Duesing’s cry for help.

Zirelli said he might not have remained on campus long enough to hear Duesing if he hadn’t listened to his son.

“He said, ‘Daddy, come back and give me a kiss,’” Zirelli recalled.

The timing was just right, he said.

“I don’t consider there to be accidents,” he said. “There’s a lot of synchronicities that happened.”

Zirelli said he left campus and came down the hill toward the canal, not seeing Duesing at first because of the blackberry bushes at the canal’s edge.

“It was a real surreal experience. I came up to the edge and I said, ‘Where are you?’” he told Duesing Sunday.

Zirelli was able to pull Duesing out of the water after clearing away some of the blackberry branches. Both sustained scratches, and Duesing’s pants were torn in several places.

The pair then walked back to her house to find Duesing’s husband, Dennis. They searched stretches of the canal for Muffin to no avail.

“We were gone a whole hour and I thought, ‘OK, no Muffin,’” Duesing said. “I get home and she’s tied up to the porch and there’s a message on the machine.”

Duesing doesn’t know where or how Muffin got out of the water — a neighbor found the dog wandering around Blackberry Lane, soaking wet and disoriented.

A lot of seemingly minor details could have created a different ending to this story. Neighbors said they were just about to prune the blackberries, but had yet to do so by that morning. Duesing said she feels lucky to have been heard — her husband was home but working on a remodeling project, and another neighbor had gone to the hospital, as a family member was scheduled to have surgery.

Duesing said she’s re-routing her dog walks from now on.

“Just the thought of that high water, I don’t even want to be near it, ever again,” she said.

Duesing wrote her experience down in a letter to the Auburn Journal, and showed Zirelli a copy Sunday.

“Your guardian angel?” Zirelli said, reading the letter. “Thank you. That’s the kindest thing I’ve ever been called.”

Does Zirelli feel like a hero?

“Not to be cliché, but I feel like I did what anyone else would do,” he said. “I always wanted to be a hero, but I don’t feel any different. Maybe that’s what a hero feels like.”