As Mario Di Meglio traveled across the Gulf of Naples in Italy late last month in a ferry with his new puppy, Noodle, the Yellow Lab slipped out of its leash and fell overboard.
Di Meglio begged the ferry operators to stop, but they refused, telling him Noodle had probably drowned. (Nice.)
Half an hour later, a group of six sailors from the RYCC Savoia Club couldn’t believe what they were seeing: a puppy treading water in the middle of nowhere.
“We approached, we were sailing and maneuvering was not easy,” one of the sailors, Massimiliano Cappa, told La Repubblica, ABC Perth reports.
The sailors managed to pull Noodle into their boat.
“He was visibly exhausted, his legs almost paralyzed by the cold,” Cappa said. “He was shaking and crying.”
The sailors dried Noodle with towels and held him close to their bodies to keep him warm. They contacted a rescue boat, which returned Noodle to shore, where he was eventually reunited with his ecstatic dog dad.
“I am very happy, I could embrace him again,” he said. While he was thrilled to have Noodle back, he said he was still angry that the ferry operators wouldn’t stop “when the dog fell into the sea.”
Photo via YouTube