Perhaps Dylan Berian and his friends thought they might spot a marlin or two during their three-hour boating tour a mile off the Florida coast last Wednesday.
What they saw instead left them stunned and shrieking: it was a Jack Russell terrier floundering in the tide. Fully clothed, Berian leapt into the water and hoisted the dog into his crew’s waiting arms.
“He warmed up to us instantly,” Berian told ABC News. “Soon as he got on the boat, he was shaking. But, after a few minutes, he calmed down. He seemed quite happy to be on a stable boat rather than being drowned by waves.”
The name tag on the dog’s collar read, Zuko. A phone number was etched below. Zuko’s doggy mommy, Ana Issa Villa, and her family were frantically searching for the dog until Villa received that consoling call.
Villa reported she and her family were enjoying a nautical outing when they suddenly noticed Zuko was missing. “He was jumping up and down in the back [of the boat] trying to bite the crashing waves,” Villa said. “Zuko must’ve jumped or fell over.”
Zuko and his rescuers met Villa at an inlet about 15 minutes away from the pickup point. Upon seeing her fur baby alive and happy, “I started crying all over again, just like a crazy person,” Villa said.
“I am so grateful to them,” Villa said of Berian and his friends. “They saved me such a huge heartbreak.”
Soon after the castaway and Villa were reunited, Zuko mugged for social media wearing his new, fluorescent orange life jacket.
Some on social media accused the rescuers of staging the event to rack up views on TikTok. However, this myth was quickly dispelled as the facts were revealed.
Zuko wasn’t the first pet to take a perilous dip in the open sea. Another Jack Russell was fished from the Gulf of Mexico in 2016 by a pair of couples celebrating mutual birthdays. He’d been in the water about three hours, kept afloat by a life vest. In 2019, oil rig worker Khon Vitisak spotted a dog’s head bobbing in the Gulf of Thailand, 135 miles offshore. The brown Aspin was plucked from the waters, fed and hydrated, and later checked by vets at Watchdog Thailand. How the dog got into the water was unknown.
The name Zuko is a boy’s name derived from the Xhosa Zulu meaning “glory,” a theme not lost on those who came to Zuko’s aid.
"This day was an incredible reminder to keep persevering even throughout difficult circumstances,” Zuko’s rescuers said. “It also reminded us to keep an eye out for those around us and lend a helping hand when others are in need.”