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When Sandra Van Alstyne saw the flashlights of a police search and rescue team through the trees, her leg had been stuck in the mud for more than 12 hours.

The 64-year-old left her house in Ontario’s cottage country at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a regular walk with her border collie. About a kilometre along a side road, the pair turned down a narrow path and stopped in a clearing to throw a Frisbee.

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The dog dropped the Frisbee in a muddy patch, and when Ms. Van Alstyne bent to retrieve it, she felt her feet sink.

“I took one step too far,” she said. “It just sucked me right in.

I tried and I tried to break the suction. There was just no way

“I was thinking to myself, ‘You idiot. What a stupid idiot,’ ” said the retired accountant who moved with her husband three years ago to Haliburton County, a popular cottaging destination about 250 km north of Toronto. A wet spring in the area created mud holes that are “actually like a sink hole, like quick sand,” said Const. Paul Potter.

Ms. Van Alstyne managed to wiggle one foot free, but the other was wedged in up to her knee — so firmly that it would eventually take an Ontario Provincial Police search and rescue team more than 30 minutes to free it.