As heartening as it always is to hear about people who went above and beyond to make life better for an animal in need, we can sometimes find that the animals have our backs just as much as we have theirs.
So many people within the last year can attest to how much their pets have helped them mentally , but some animals have also proven themselves to be life-saving in times of emergency.
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And while we can often point to dogs as the big heroes in these situations, we can’t always predict which animal is going to be at the right place in the nick of time.
As we’re about to see, one swimmer was lucky enough to have a whole group of them watching over him when he needed them the most.
On August 22, a man in Ireland went missing after attempting to swim over five miles to Mucklaghmore Rock off the Irish coast.
But as Gerard O’Donnell from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution told the BBC, what he didn’t know was that even during the summer, the waters he was swimming in are often bitterly cold.
After his abandoned clothes were discovered on a beach soon after noon, the RNLI launched a search for the man.
However, the situation became more grim by the hour as night started to fall before anyone found a trace of him in the water.
In O’Donnell’s words, “They had been scanning the water for any sign of movement and were worried with light fading that they would not find anyone.”
But by 10:30 pm, something caught their eyes that would make the difference between life and death.
The rescue crew caught sight of a pod of dolphins and when they approached to see what they were surrounding, they could see the man poking his head out of the water.
And to their surprise, he was still conscious when they pulled him from the water, which is how we know where he was trying to go.
But rescuers considered the fact that he was even still alive miraculous.
This was not only due to the period of time he spent lost at sea, but also due to the fact that he was only wearing swim trunks when he was discovered.
Unsurprisingly, he was both hypothermic and exhausted and was thus brought to University Hospital Kerry, where he is reportedly recovering well.
As O’Donnell put it, “This was a very lucky individual.”
h/t: BBC
