MARCO ISLAND, Fla. (Newscore) - A Pennsylvania woman on vacation in Florida took a tip from two dolphins to save a lost Doberman Pinscher that got stranded on a sandbar.
When Audrey D'Alessandro and her husband, Sam, walked out of their home on Marco Island, near Naples, Fla., to go fishing, "we saw these two dolphins, and they were splashing and making this big commotion" in a canal behind their vacation home, she said.
Although it is not uncommon to see dolphins swimming through the canal on their way to the Gulf of Mexico, Audrey D'Alessandro said that this time, "they were just there, in one place, splashing water against the canal wall."
When the D'Alessandros went to investigate, they saw that an 80-pound Doberman Pinscher was standing on a sandbar, half-submerged even at low tide. The dog, which disappeared from a nearby home some 12 hours before, was too weak to bark, she added, and could not get back onto land because of a several-foot-high canal wall.
By the time the nurse lowered herself into the canal to get onto the sandbar, the dutiful dolphins were gone, but her husband called firefighters, who helped Audrey D'Alessandro hoist the dog out of the water. Turbo, who was shaking and unable to stand after being rescued, was quickly reunited with his owner -- who got the happy news while putting up lost-dog posters.
A few days later, a thankful Turbo and his owner made the eight-block trip to visit the D'Alessandros, who have a yellow Labrador of their own.
But Audrey D'Alessandro brushed off the island-wide praise the couple received afterward, saying that while "people pulled up to us when were driving and said, 'You're the couple that saved that dog,' I said, 'Yeah, sure.' But I think it was really those dolphins.