Last Friday a crew on an oil rig 220 km off Thailand’s southern coast spotted a young dog swimming nearby. Luckily the weather was calm or the dog would have drowned. According to Merrit Kennedy of NPR, oil rig worker Vitisak Payalaw said the dog swam toward the rig’s platform and clung to it, shivering and partly submerged as the seas got rougher, and holding on silently as the oil rig workers above built an impromptu rope sling to rescue him. Kocha Olarn and Josh Berlinger of CNN quote Payalaw as saying:
His eyes were so sad. He just kept looking up just like he wanted to say, “Please help me.” At that moment, whoever saw this, they would just have to help.
Once the workers pulled the dog up, they gave him a bath and water and an electrolyte drink. As the dog recovered they named him Boonrod, which means “good-karma survivor”. There is some speculation that Boonrod fell off a passing freighter.
CNN says Boonrod is an aspin, “a breed native to the Philippines”; the word “aspin” generally means a popular mongrel dog in that country. The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) has suggested the term “aspin” in preference to the word “askal”, a pejorative portmanteau of “street dog” in Tagalog. It’s common practice in the Philippines to let a family’s male aspin socialize on the streets during the day while coming home for the night.
Boonrod is now in Thailand and it looks like Payalaw will be adopting him. The Thaiger reports that Boonrod has recovered and has become a bit of a social media star, with a popular Facebook page and people making paintings of him. This is all much better than swimming for his life through the Gulf of Thailand!