Alligator Tries Eating Pet Dog Alive, Owner Rescues Canine From Predator's Jaws

A massive alligator caught hold of a pet dog and tried to eat it alive but the canine was saved by its owner who pried the predator's mouth open. The unnamed Nokomis, Florida, resident saw that his Labrador retriever had fallen into a canal behind his house where there was a 6 to 8-foot-long alligator.

“The homeowner heard a commotion and ran out. Saw the alligator had the dog. He jumped in the canal, pried the alligator’s mouth open, and got the dog,” Lt. Rob Gerkin of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission told WWSB/ABC7 on a Facebook Live broadcast.

“We got a happy ending to this one,” said Gerkin. “They don’t always happen that way.”

The owner was successful in saving his pet dog in the Aug. 2 incident but he suffered minor injuries. The man then took his pet to a vet.

A trapper captured the gator nearly six hours after the attack.

“I had a friend come over Monday and build this fence, because I have two dogs and I had to be able to let them out,” Kelley Ann Ayers, the man's neighbor told ABC7. “It was scary. It was very scary.”

Alligator sightings are common in Florida and there have been several instances when these reptiles were seen lurking in neighborhoods. About one-quarter of the estimated 5 million American gators living in the southeastern United States are found in Florida.

In May, a fisherman narrowly escaped an alligator attack while he was fishing in the Everglades in Florida. A video shows the unsuspecting fisherman picking up his catch of the day when a massive alligator launches an attack. The man leaned to pick the fish from the ground when the stealthy gator leaped out of the water with its jaws wide open.

"When I reached down to land the fish I was completely caught off guard by a gator who had been sitting on the bottom of the water bank," the fisherman told ViralHog.