Dog Found Alive and Swimming 135 Miles from Shore, Rescuers Have No Idea How He Got There
Time for me to fess up: If I had to pick a favorite when it comes to canines or kitties, I’d pick cats any day of the week.
Still, even a feline lover such as myself has to admit that dogs are pretty impressive animals. Through the ages, they’ve survived privations and perils that would’ve felled other animals.
People has specifically highlighted some of these especially brave canines, including a black lab who wandered the mountains for 40 days and a terrier mix that survived a small plane crash. However, none of them can hold a candle to one brave Thai dog.
According to USA Today, the story started at an oil rig that’s part of Chevron Thailand Exploration and Production — not exactly a hopping place.
Located some 135 miles off the coast and smack in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, it’s definitely isolated. You wouldn’t think to find much of any wildlife out there except the occasional bird and lots of finned critters swimming beneath the waters’ surface.
So when a worker glanced down into the water on April 12, he was surprised to see a bedraggled but otherwise healthy dog looking up at him.
It didn’t bark or whimper. In fact, it was so exhausted that it hardly seemed to respond at all.
People aboard the rig guessed that it might have tumbled off of a fishing trawler. The Daily Mail reported that the crew dropped a rope down the rig’s superstructure and hauled up the dripping pooch.
Khon Vitisak, who helped hoist the dog, said, “We found [him] trying to swim toward our rig, which is about 135 miles from the shore. Thankfully, the sea was quite still because the wind was calm.
“We just saw [his] small head. But if the ripples were bigger, I think we probably wouldn’t have noticed [him] at all.”
He added, “When we first took [him] onboard, [he] was depressed and tired from being in the water for a long time. [He] had lost [his] body water. When he gave [him] water and minerals, [his] symptoms improved.”
What do you do with a dog in the middle of an ocean? A rig is no place for pups, but the rig workers did what they could to keep him comfortable.
They fed him and gave him water. Then they set to building a cage for him, welding it out of bits of metal.
After 48 hours on the rig, the dog was ready to head back to the mainland, so an oil-hauling ship took the pooch back to southern Thailand.
The dog needn’t worry about finding a forever home, either, as he’s managed to charm his rescuer. Vitisak has said that he’ll adopt the mutt if no one else steps forward.
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