A dog had a miraculous escape after being rescued from an inflatable kayak that had drifted nearly five kilometres out to sea off the coast of Northumberland, England. Bruce the Alsatian was enjoying a day at the beach with his owner, Arran McArthur, when a sudden wave yanked him from his grasp and swept the boat away.
Arran desperately swam after Bruce, but a strong offshore breeze pushed the pooch further from the shore. Forced to return to Bamburgh beach, he alerted the coastguard, and the RNLI lifeboat was launched to search for the missing pet. A mayday call was also issued, which was heard by Jimmy Reid, a tourist boat skipper who was dropping off 90 day trippers on the Farne Islands to see a colony of puffins.
Jimmy, 36, and his crewmate Aaron Fordy decided to join the search. “The lifeboat and a second boat were checking closer to the shore so I looked further out where I thought he might have drifted,” Jimmy said. “After about half an hour we saw a blue and white kayak but its sides were quite deep so we couldn’t see if there was a dog in it. To be honest, we thought we were going to find an empty boat. The dog was really hunkered down so it wasn’t until we got right alongside we saw it was in there.”
When Aaron tried to pull Bruce onto their boat, Serenity IV, the terrified dog slipped out of his harness and plunged into the sea. But Aaron somehow reached down and hauled the freezing, shaking pet aboard. They wrapped Bruce in towels to warm him and gave him a drink before picking up their tourists from the island and heading back to port to reunite him with his owner.
“Aaron has two Alsatians himself so he was able to look after him,” Jimmy said. “By the time we got there Bruce was full of beans and couldn’t wait to get on dry land. Arran was very grateful but also very apologetic. I’ve been at sea 10 years now and seen some unusual things — but never a dog alone in a boat before.” Arran added, “I’ll not be putting Bruce in the kayak anytime soon that’s for sure.”
