A 1-year-old pit bull named Darby is one very good boy as he bravely came to the rescue of his owner, who was bitten on the leg by a shark.
The horrifying incident happened on a warm summer day last month when James White, of Rohnert Park, California, was fishing from the shore at Bodega Bay in Sonoma County, NBC Bay Area reported.
After some time, White began to feel an aggressive tug on his line, which he struggled to pull in.
“It was about 10 minutes,” White told NBC Bay Area. “The only way I think I was able to get the line back is because it was swimming towards me.”
It wasn’t until the creature got into shallow water that White realized what he had caught — a 6-foot long sevengill shark.
White then attempted to remove the hook from the shark’s mouth, but it quickly sank its teeth into his ankle.
Within seconds, White told NBC Bay Area “There was blood everywhere.”
“The first bite punctured an artery,” he told the outlet. “The pressure was intense.”
White had noticed some other fisherman nearby and yelled out for help.
That’s when Darby, who had been left in the car, sprang into action.
The pooch had somehow opened the car door and ran down to his owner. He first attempted to get the shark off of White by biting into the shark’s gills. However, that didn’t work as it caused the animal to sink its teeth deeper into White’s ankle.
“And I told him, ‘No back-off,'” White told NBC Bay Area.
Acting fast, Darby attempted another approach.
“[Darby] repositioned and grabbed it by the tail,” White told NBC Bay Area. “He literally ran up the hill with it and pulled it off my leg.”
White then tossed the shark by into the water.
After the incident, he told the outlet that his love for the pooch got stronger.
“He’s been a part of the family from day one. Just now a little more. If it wasn’t for him I would have been a lot worse,” White told the outlet.
White also explained Darby’s heroic act has been dubbed a “fish tale.”
“The first time I told somebody this, they were like, ‘You’re out of your mind, there’s no way that happened,'” White told NBC Bay Area.
“Then I showed him the pictures and I’m like, ‘No, it absolutely happened,'” White added of his brutal scars.
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