Florida woman fights off alligator to save her puppy

An alligator on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation in Florida, June 22, 2024. Danie Wright was walking her Shih Tzu near a creek behind her home in Land O’Lakes, Fla., when an alligator attacked them. (Scott McIntyreThe New York Times)

By JOHNNY DIAZ

As she does each afternoon, Danie Wright took her puppy out for a walk near a creek behind her home in her Florida neighborhood.

But what began as a routine stroll Wednesday with Dax, a 4-month-old shih tzu, turned into a harrowing attack by an alligator that suddenly emerged from the moss-covered creek and yanked on the dog’s collar.

“The next thing I heard was a squeak like my dog,” Wright recalled in an interview Sunday. “I turned and looked, and an alligator had him. The alligator’s front teeth were through the collar of my dog.”

Wright, a professional dog sitter, said the alligator then tried to drag Dax into the water in Land O’Lakes, which is about 20 miles north of Tampa.

“I held onto the leash for dear life,” Wright said, adding that the alligator, which was about 5 feet long, also dragged her into the water.

She and the 5-pound dog were in about a foot of water, she said, when she used her right hand to grab the dog’s collar, pull him out of the water and toss him back onto shore.

As she was rescuing the dog, the alligator grabbed her left arm in its mouth. Wright, 53, a former college rugby player from Massachusetts, shifted into combat mode.

“I started punching, elbowing, kicking and kneeing and I was lucky enough to flip him over onto his back,” she said.

During the struggle, the gator loosened its grip on her arm enough that she was able to pull it out of its mouth.

Back onshore, she called the authorities, and deputies from the Pasco Sheriff’s Office responded with fire and rescue crews and two alligator trappers.

Dax was safe and uninjured but Wright, who was covered in moss and blood, said she had several bites to her arm. “I was so lucky it was a small alligator,” she said.

She said she was bandaged at the scene and did not require stitches but had to get a tetanus shot and antibiotics.

Trappers eventually captured the alligator and removed it, Wright said.

Unwelcome alligators, called nuisance gators, are typically killed after they come into contact with humans, according to a 2012 brochure from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The commission did not immediately respond to inquiries Sunday about Wright’s encounter.

“If you live in Florida or anywhere there are gators, you have to keep your eye out 24/7,” Wright said. “I never saw the alligator coming.”

Alligator attacks on humans are rare.

Florida had an average of eight unprovoked alligator bites that required medical attention a year over the 10-year period that ended in 2022, according to the commission.

In May, an 11-foot alligator tipped over a canoe and killed a 61-year-old woman, in Central Florida. The woman, Cynthia Diekema, of Davenport, Florida, was canoeing with her husband in about 2 1/2 feet of water where Tiger Creek meets Lake Kissimmee in Polk County, which is south of Orlando, when they passed over a large alligator that thrashed and threw the couple into the water, the authorities said at the time.

And in early March, a woman who was paddling in the same waterway where Diekema was killed was attacked by an 8-foot alligator that bit her elbow. She was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for her injury.