A North Carolina man refused to let an alligator eat his beloved black Labrador retriever named Strike. Armed with just a rake, he jumped into the pond to save his dog.
Speaking with Outdoor Life, Bonner Herring opened up about his encounter with the gator. He said that he would put his life at risk again if it came to it.
"Call me crazy. But when you've done it as long as I have, you know when you have a special one," Herring told the outlet. "And I would say most every outdoorsman I know would have done the exact same thing. And, you know what? If the roles were reversed, and I was the one in the pond needing his help, he would have been the first one to my aid."
Alligator Attacks Dog
Herring had been gardening near the pond when Strike went down to the water. The dog decided to cool off in the shallow water. That's when Herring heard his dog yelp and immediately ran to his aid. All he had was his rake to defend the both of them.
Strike was fully underwater when Herring made it to the pond. Herring saw the ripples in the water, and Strike's head pop up above the surface. He instantly jumped into the pond with the rake still in his hand. He swam straight to the dog and the alligator and managed to free his pooch from the animal's grasp.
"So we started swimming, kicking, and pulling, and finally we started making some progress. And I thought to myself, Please Lord, don't let him come back on us," Herring says. "Then, all of a sudden, that thing popped up right beside us, I'd say five or six yards away. And when he did, he wanted to show me what he was ... He took a big inhale and popped up his whole body on the surface, and I saw for the first time how big he was. And I knew, quite frankly, that I had nothing on him. He was way too big for me to deal with."
Sadly, the dog suffered a broken leg from the alligator attack.
"His [right] leg was broken in three places, and he had puncture wounds on both back legs," says Herring. It ended up costing $10,000 in fees, but it was worth saving his best friend's life.
