A blind dog who wanted to swim to the Isle of Wight was saved from the sea off Hampshire after getting into serious problems.
Fly, a small border collie, entered into the water in the afternoon at Lepe beach in the New Forest area.
Fly’s owner Mark Cowing jumped into the water to save his pet but could not cope up with the sea’s strong currents and was brought back to the shore by a kayaker.
The rescued dog later scoffed down 4 pouches of food and a pork pie as well!
Mr Cowing, 55, hails from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and was on holiday in the area, when the ordeal happened, he says that they were playing on the shoreline when all of a sudden, the dog wanted to swim to the Isle of Wight.
Thankfully a coastguard helicopter found it struggling at 200m (656ft) offshore and asked an RNLI crew to help it.
Cowing says that the dog got to 20 or 30 feet out in the water and that was when he had to strip off and rush into the sea to rescue him.
Soon the dog disappeared out of sight and he presumed that it drowned and so he waved out for help as he was quite far into the sea, praise God that a 71 year old man in his kayak dragged him to shore.
The helicopter found Fly and the RNLI lifeboat helm Mark Harker then jumped into the sea and pulled out the tried dog into boat.
Cowing was very emotional when he saw his dear dog and blames himself for putting him through that ordeal.
Fly was treated to a grand dinner when he was back in the caravan, he finished off four packets of dinner and a pork pie and then retired to bed.
Cowing has praises for the emergency services and is trying to get in touch with the kayaker, who had heart trouble but still managed to pull him out of the sea.
The RNLI said that Fly had cataracts, and due to that he was in a bad situation and the lifeboat had saved him just in trouble.