Everyone needs a hero at some point in their lives, whether it be in the form of some unexpected kind words from a family member or someone who saves another from a potential disaster.
In Nellie’s case, a labrador-weimaraner mix, her hero wound up being a total stranger on a day that was supposed to be a fun, relaxing day at the beach.
Like many dogs of her breed, or similar, she loves to retrieve toy balls and the beach is the perfect place to do that with its seemingly limitless space.
Her human, Lisa Delong, had taken her to the beach and was throwing the ball into the water, just as Nellie liked, when suddenly Nellie began to swim a bit too far and soon became a small speck in the water.
“I think she thought she was going for a good swim and then got confused about where to go. She couldn’t really differentiate between what shore to come back to.”
She explained that Nellie began to swim in slow, confused circles, clearly assessing which way she should go and never being able to decide. At 1,000 feet from shore, Delong claimed that she knew she wasn’t strong enough to swim out, retrieve her, and then swim all the way back.
As time passed, a crowd had gathered to help Delong in yelling out Nellie’s name, but the dog couldn’t seem to hear them from that far away.
“I don’t think she even heard us calling,” Delong said. “Several people were yelling and trying to get her attention, but I don’t think she even heard us at that point.”
Likely scared, with the waves and her paddling drowning out their screams, Nellie had limited energy left for swimming around aimlessly.
That’s when Adam Parker arrived, who works as a paramedic and was walking his dog at the time, and he knew immediately that he couldn’t stand idly by while Delong frantically called the local yacht club to ask that someone pick up Nellie on a boat.
Parker told The Dodo,
“I would not have been able to live with myself if I had been standing there and watched Nellie drown. So I made the choice to go after her.”
He was just in time, too, as he recounted that Nellie was very out of breath when he got to her and wouldn’t have lasted much longer. It’s no surprise that she was so exhausted by that point too, as Parker overheard someone say that she had been out there for nearly an hour. When he reached her, Parker simply tugged on her collar twice to point her towards the shore and Nellie understood and did the rest.
When they reached the shore, Nellie gave Parker a ton of kisses to show how grateful she was, and Delong was filled with gratitude as well.
Though it was scary for all involved, Nellie especially, the incident ended on a funny note. Remember that ball that Nellie had been retrieving? Well, just before she attacked Parker with kisses, she dropped the ball on the ground because she had been carrying it the whole time.
“She didn’t drop her ball the whole time,” Delong said. “She was proud of herself, I think. She might have thought she was chasing it, but it was in her mouth the whole time.”
What would you have done if this were your dog? Please share, like, and comment on this article!
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