Animal Insting

Remember how I told you that dolphins are the second smartest animals in the whole world, after chimpanzees?  Well, a couple of weeks ago, two dolphins proved exactly how smart they are by saving the life of a doberman pinscher.

And here's how it all happened.  This couple named Audrey and Sam D'Alessandro, who have a vacation home on Marco Island, in Florida, went out one morning to go fishing.  And when they went out, they saw these two dolphins in the canal behind their house.  Which is not unusual because dolphins are all the time swimming through the canal to get to the Gulf of Mexico.  But these dolphins were acting very strange because they kept staying in one spot by the canal wall and splashing a bunch, like they were trying to get somebody's attention.



So the D'Alessandros went over to see what was going on, and guess what!  There was a doberman in the canal, and he was standing on a sandbar, but the water was still halfway up over him, even though it was low tide.  He couldn't get out of the canal because of the high walls, and he was too weak to even bark.  But the D'Alessandros saw him because of the dolphins.  And Mrs. D'Alessandro climbed down into the canal onto the sandbar while her husband called the police.  And the dolphins swam away because their job was done.

Then everybody helped get the dog out of the canal.  He was so weak when he got out that he couldn't even stand up, but I think he was very happy to be out of the water.  His people were busy putting up Lost Dog posters when the police found them, and they hurried over to get their dog and take him home.  The name of the dog was Turbo.  He had been missing for 12 hours, and he probably spent several hours in the canal, so it's lucky he didn't drown.

It turned out that the D'Alessandros have a yellow lab, so they were glad they could save Turbo.  But Mrs. D'Alessandro says that mostly it was the dolphins who saved Turbo.

So that's the end of this happy story, and the moral is that you should try never to fall into a canal, but if you do, make sure there are some dolphins around to help rescue you.