A teenage girl has told how a quiet walk with her boxer dog along a canal towpath turned to horror and a dramatic rescue.

Laura Teal watched in terror as a woman fell from her narrowboat home into the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and vanished under the water.

She was eventually rescued and revived by a police officer and ambulance crew after she was found submerged at the side of the narrowboat moored at Snaygill, Skipton.

The woman, who has not been named but is believed to be in her 50s, is still “stable” in Airedale General Hospital, at Steeton, near Keighley, 14 days after her ordeal.

The drama unfolded at about 7pm on Saturday, June 19.

Laura had already helped lift the woman from the towpath after she had just scrambled out of the water having fallen in once.

The 17-year-old took her back inside the boat and asked if the woman needed help, but was told she was alright.

Laura, an animal management student at Craven College, Skipton, climbed back off the boat but was worried and telephoned her mother for advice.

As she did so, the woman appeared on the front of the boat, asked to see Missy, Laura’s dog, and seconds later fell back into the canal and vanished.

As Laura watched in terror she was talking on her mobile to her mum, desperately asking what to do.

“I was terrified,” Laura, of Sharphaw Avenue, Skipton, said. “I had seen her go in, vanish, then come up again, and splash and swim around with her face down. I thought she was swimming out, but she sank again and stayed down.

“My mum told me not to jump in, that it was too dangerous and that she would call the police.”

Meanwhile, Laura’s mum, Joanne Thornton, had telephoned the emergency services and been told to tell Laura not to get in the water.

“I was running down there and when I arrived I couldn’t see the woman anywhere. It was horrific,” said Mrs Thornton, a 38-year-old teaching assistant.

Minutes later police arrived and an officer put on a life-jacket, climbed into the water and with a long pole began prodding the canal bottom.

“Within a couple of feet of the boat he found her, reached in, grabbed her feet and pulled her out onto the bank,” she said.

“She must have been under water about 15 minutes. She looked lifeless – we really thought she was dead.”

Police gave mouth-to-mouth treatment and an ambulance gave her oxygen before she was taken away.

“I was in a state of shock,” Laura said. “I was crying. I blamed myself but I knew it would be dangerous to get in and I was told not to.”