PLANTATION, Fla. — A woman is credited with saving her small dog’s life after she found her pet with its head inside of an alligator’s mouth.
Stephany Pineda told WSVN she heard her mother screaming, and when she ran outside of her south Florida home, she saw her French bulldog’s head in the animal’s mouth. Pineda ran outside toward the animals, screaming and pulling on the dog until the gator let go.
“She was being dragged by a gator,” Pineda told WTVJ. “I started screaming like crazy, ‘It’s killing her!’ I can’t remember — like, everything went silent in my head, and I grabbed her. But I screamed so loud, and my mom was screaming so loud that he let go.”
“All I heard from her was, ‘The gator, the baby, the dog,’” Will Ubario, Pineda’s husband, told WSVN. “So I freaked out, and when I got there, she told me, ‘I saved the dog. I took the dog out of the gator’s mouth.’”
Ubario told WSVN that his wife saved two dogs, saying their second French bulldog was also near the alligator, barking at it. Pineda was able to grab it and bring it to safety.
Pineda told WTVJ that she and her husband believe that heavy rain in the last week washed away dirt under their fence, creating an opening large enough for the alligator to come in and snatch the dog.
Trappers came and were able to catch the alligator by using a machine that mimics the sound of a dog barking, WSVN reported. A second alligator was expected to be removed from the area as well.
Trappers told WTVJ that they brought the seven-and-a-half-foot alligator to a wildlife sanctuary.
The dog, named Gloria, is doing OK, with Pineda telling WSVN that her puncture wounds are healing.
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