Hero Pets

Amazing rescue tales!

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DARBY

PIT BULL FIGHTS OFF SHARK (YES, SHARK!) TO SAVE HIS OWNER

BY Bill Hangley Jr.

Everyone wanted a piece of the dog that got a piece of the shark. I got emails from people in Russia. One guy offered me a hundred euros. Another guy found me at work and offered me 575 cash right now. I said, Keep walking, buddy,” James White says of the offers he got for his dog, Darby.

“It got to the point where I started saying, No, no, no, that’s not me.” When White, a 43-year-old security agent from Rohnert Park, California, snagged the pit bull puppy in 2018, Darby was just another four-legged lug: young, friendly, playful, strong as an Ox.

Then, in the summer of 2019, came Darby’s date with destiny.

White was fishing in Northern California’s Bodega Bay. He left Darby, then a year old and 100 pounds, to chill in the parked car, windows down, while he cast his line a few yards away. The fish weren’t biting, White recalls, until, suddenly, they were.

At first, White thought he had hooked a stingray. But as he reeled it in, he realized it was a sevengill shark, about 6 feet long. Not uncommon, but still dangerous.

“Their teeth are gnarly,’ White says. He brought it close and carefully unhooked it, expecting it to swim away. It didn’t. The shark clamped down on his ankle.

“All of a sudden there was blood everywhere,’ says White.