A Dog and Dolphin Hero Tale
From a New Zealand newspaper, The Timaru Herald.
January 18, 2005
Timaru, New Zealand- Dean Gibson can tell the ultimate fisherman's story -- the one about his drowning dog and the dolphin.
The almost unbelievable, but true, canine adventure took place at the Opihi River mouth a week ago when Dean and his mate Craig Woodnorth went to the river for a spot of salmon fishing one evening.
With the pair was Dean's seven-month-old german wirehaired pointer Heidi.
The men were fishing on the south bank of the mouth when a wave came in over the spit and washed Heidi into the river.
The river was still running high from heavy rain. Dean stripped off intending to jump in and get her, but Heidi was swept out through the mouth too quickly for him to do so.
He saw her flipped over in several waves before her head finally came up and she started swimming out to sea in the strong current.
'I rang (helicopter pilot) Sandy Jamieson,' Dean said, explaining how he was hoping Mr Jamieson might be able to lower a bucket under the chopper and scoop Heidi up. He wasn't home so that plan never eventuated.
As he rang his wife Janine with the bad news, he was watching Heidi through his binoculars. She was just a dot swimming lower and lower in the water.
Dean saw a fin and relayed the bad news to Janine that there was a shark beside Heidi. Another look and he realised the fin belonged to a dolphin.
What happened next stunned the two fishermen. The dolphin appeared to swim in front of Heidi making her turn towards the shore. It then swam nearby, rising out of the water a couple of times. Dean can't help but wonder if it was checking to make sure Heidi was still swimming in the right direction.
Even with the help from the dolphin it still took her close to half an hour to get back into the beach, finally coming ashore about one kilometre south of the river mouth.
A wave dumped her back on the beach.
'She shook herself, spun around, and was pretty pleased to see us,' Dean said.
'It was a big swim for a wee dog.'
Yet the adventure didn't slow her down. Minutes later she was chasing seagulls.
Even a week after the incident Dean finds it amazing.
'It blew me away. It makes you wonder if the dolphin knew she was in a bit of a predicament.'
At this time of year Dean fishes at the mouth a couple of times a week.
While he often sees dolphins there he has never heard of a dolphin rescue in the area before.
Whangarei diver, author and dolphin enthusiast Wade Doak wasn't at all surprised to hear Heidi's story. While he couldn't recall yesterday any other cases of dogs being rescued by dolphins, he could offer a whole filing drawer of stories involving dogs and dolphins.
In an incident in Marseilles, France, a dolphin used to bang its tail on the water near a fish canning factory when it wanted the two dogs that lived there to play with her. The dogs would leap into the water and the dolphin would then tease them by swimming around and under them. On one occasion the dogs did catch the dolphin, but didn't hurt her.
He also has notes on a dolphin called Aihe which used to live at Takaka. It always wanted dogs to swim out to sea, although the pets' owners usually stopped the adventures.
Dr Liz Slooten, a marine mammal scientist at Otago University, has been studying dolphins for 20 years but had never heard of a dolphin helping another animal until yesterday. But it didn't surprise her.
'We do it to other animals,' she said, suggesting that the dolphin would have been well aware Heidi was in trouble. As she was not a threat to the dolphin it was willing to help her.
'Humans are not unique in helping other species.'
