Golden Retriever Disappears in South Carolina Boating Accident and the Outcome Is Incredible
An entire community in the South Carolina lowcountry rallied to help a family with a missing Golden Retriever this week after a boating accident sent pup and owner into the river. Jeff Wiseman and his dog Rocky were out for an evening boat ride when they collided with an abandoned concrete dock on the Ashley River in West Ashley. Both occupants of the boat were thrown off their boat and when Wiseman surfaced, injured with seven broken ribs, his dog was nowhere to be seen.
The rest of the family searched for hours in the fading light, and then Kim Wiseman, the pup’s human mother, took to social media for help. And the community came out in spades.
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Kim Wiseman’s post asking for help was shared thousands of times, by members of the community, various emergency services and local social media accounts, and even folks from other states. (According to one report, a man from Georgia came with a thermal imaging drone to help search.)
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The Golden Retriever was gone for over twenty-four hours, and the family was beginning to despair of ever seeing their precious pup again. Then on the morning of June twenty-fifth, they got the call they’d been praying for. A family who had seen the posts about Rocky recognized him in the disheveled dog they caught chasing a raccoon in their yard. He was still wearing his red life vest.
Somehow, Rocky had made it all the way across the river to the opposite shore, which meant all the searchers were concentrating on the wrong area—the wrong shore of the river. Rocky was quickly scooped up by his family and taken to the vet for assessment, according to Kim Wiseman. There, he was deemed generally unharmed, aside from exhaustion and a swollen ankle.
The family is so relieved to have found their beloved dog. “Words cannot express our gratitude for the overwhelming love for Rocky—it brought him home,” Kim Wiseman writes on her Facebook page.
Looks like Rocky should be the official mascot of that life jacket company.
Water Safety for Pets
Life jackets are a life-saving precaution for both humans and animals on the water. It is likely that Rocky swam for the first shore he could see, even though it was the far one. This may have accounted for his exhaustion. There is no way to know what kind of struggles he experienced in the day and a half before he was found, but it’s certain he would not have survived his ordeal without the assistance of his life jacket.
Pet Life Jackets
The jacket worn by Rocky during his experience was the Paws Aboard Life Jacket, which retails for about forty to forty-five dollars for a dog his side. It comes in a variety of highly-visible colors and includes a handle to help humans easily grab hold of the dogs to haul them back into boats or onto docks.
Good life vests for your four-legged friends should fit snugly around the chest and back, with straps around the chest and under the abdomen, and leave their legs free for paddling.
We’re all so relieved for Rocky and his family and wish them all a speedy recovery.
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