A passer-by called the fire service after spotting his local councillor trapped in a mud filled ditch – alongside her husband who had also got trapped trying to rescue her.

Cllr Anne Hay tripped, hurt her foot and fell into the dyke near her Chatteris home after going after her runaway pet dog.

“I must admit I didn’t realise our local ditches run so deep,” said Cllr Hall. “I was completely stuck in the water and mud”.

She said her neighbour heard her and “shouted to my husband who came to find me. But he, too, got stuck trying to get me out.

“A walker came by and told her ‘I think you need the fire brigade’ and called them,” she said.

Chatteris fire service responded within seven minutes, said Cllr Hay, and put down a ladder to get her husband out first.

She said that I had “hit my head - I think it might have knocked me out. Any way an ambulance came and took me to hospital”.

Released later, Cllr Hay has a painful memory of the day as she is sporting a black eye and a painful foot.

Her rescue happened shortly after 7pm on Saturday and followed a visit from her daughter and son-in-law for lunch.

Later, said Cllr Hay, she had a glass of wine with her neighbour who had popped in but her pet dog Truffles got out when she opened the door to bid her visitor farewell.

Her Chinese crested powder puff ball was in the doghouse for a while but after owning Truffles for eight years she quickly forgave the family pet.

And she has vowed to abide by her husband’s new motto following the rescue mission which is to “not go chasing after bloody dogs.

“And especially not if you’re still wearing the rubber clogs you’d normally use for gardening”.

Cllr Hay, a Chatteris town, Fenland district and Cambridgeshire county councillor, decided early on to tell her friends what had happened.

“What not to do on a Saturday night, go chasing after my runaway dog down Blackmill Drove, lose my footing and end up in the bottom of a mud filled ditch surrounded by nettles,” was how she described it. “Seriously many thanks to firefighters for rescuing both me and my husband (who waded in after me to try to get me out then got into trouble himself.)

“I cannot thank them and the paramedics enough”