She had a ruff time at sea.
An adorable Florida dog was rescued more than a mile off the Gulf of Mexico — found doggy paddling for survival while lost and stranded for at least an hour.
Eleanor, a 2-year-old Australian cattle dog, vanished when her family was enjoying a boat ride near the Sanibel Causeway of Fort Myers on Sunday evening, owner Kathleen Baker told NBC2.
“It probably been a minute or so and I hadn’t seen her. And I looked back and she was gone. Totally gone,” Kathleen recalled.
As the sun set, Kathleen and her husband, Ben, began to lose hope of ever locating Eleanor, who they affectionately know as “Ellie.”
“It was getting dark and we were running out of gas and so we couldn’t keep looking, there were very few boats out there. We thought we would never see her again,” she recalled of the desperate search.
“I felt like I had a big hole in my heart and I just felt like we had somehow let her down.”
Little did the couple know, however, that Ellie was still alive and trying to doggy paddle to safety.
About an hour after she disappeared from the Bakers’ boat, the intrepid four-legged friend was spotted by Terry Johns, who was behind the wheel of a dinner cruise on the Sanibel Harbor Princess about a mile and a half offshore.
“They were all pretty excited about something going on, so I went back there and, sure enough, as I looked over the side, to see what they were pointing at, it looked like a little head that was swimming,” Johns told NBC2.
“Sure enough, it was a little puppy, that was, making its way toward the back of the boat,” he said.
A photo taken from the boat showed Ellie’s head bobbing up and down in the water.
Capt. Johns and his crew stopped the boat and pulled Ellie on deck. One of the staffers, Alex Lanier, took the pooch home to work on reuniting her with her family.
Ellie’s microchip was not working, but her owners finally realized what had happened after seeing a story about the amazing rescue on WINK News.
“That’s when we made some calls,” Ben Baker, told the outlet.
“I’m 72 years old, and I’ve probably cried more in the past 18 hours [than ever before],” he added of the agonizing day after Ellie disappeared.
The couple drove 40 minutes to North Fort Myers, where they picked Ellie up from Lanier.
Ellie was delighted to see her owners, and immediately ran circles between their legs and came in for some well-earned cuddles.
“She was having a good time because they had a little mini farm. So she was running around. When we saw her, we were just so thankful. So thankful, and it was just a miracle,” Kathleen told NBC2.
Johns – who had previously rescued another stranded dog from the middle of the ocean – agreed that finding Ellie was nothing short of maritime divine intervention.
“Luckily, the dog had a little angel over her head that day too. The stars were in a line for Ellie that night,” he said.
Going forward, the Bakers decided that Ellie will wear a life vest when they take her on the boat.
“Even though she’s a good swimmer, obviously, I think that would have helped just to spot her,” Kathleen said, adding that the ordeal “was my worst nightmare with a happy ending.”
