Shelley Mamott, Staff Writer

When Erma Iverson, 79, lay helpless near her home on a country road, her Labrador Retriever Crackers never left her side. For 20 grueling hours with temperatures dipping and animals coming by, Crackers protected Iverson.

Iverson was taking an afternoon walk to her sister’s about one-third of a mile across the road accompanied by Crackers.

She bent down to pick up some branches and fell. No matter what she did Iverson, who has Parkinson’s, could not get back up. She was about 20 feet from the road and the same distance from her home.

The medical alert button she always wore didn’t work. She yelled and yelled but no one heard her cries.

Night soon fell and Crackers stayed with her through it all, even when the unwelcome nighttime visitors arrived. Curious raccoons approached and Crackers chased them off. She heard the barking of coyotes, and became really scared. Some of the younger ones came near, but Crackers scared them off as well.

With temperatures falling into the mid-40’s that night, she was feeling the cold. She was dehydrated and had not been able to take her medication. As she shivered in the cold, Iverson said she’d roll over and warm one side and then the other.

Finally she fell asleep. The rumble of trucks hauling gravel woke her at daybreak. She had fallen in a place where she could not easily be seen from the road and was unable to lift her arms and wave down help.

Sometime in the morning she either went to sleep or lost consciousness. Shortly after noon, her trusty mail carrier Stan Boushek, spotted her from her driveway and roused her and called for help.

Iverson spent nine days in hospital. She says nurses told her that she probably wouldn’t have made it a couple more hours out there.

The 79-year-old woman has a lot to be thankful for. First thanks go to her dog, Crackers, for being by her side throught the ordeal and keeping the coyotes and raccoons at bay. Her next thanks go out to postal carrier Stan Boushek, who discovered her and called for help.