Bella celebrates World Dog Day with her second dad after a sea voyage

Bella, the dog who accompanied the Australian Tim Shaddock for more than two months in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, celebrates her International Day this Friday (21) with her new “father”, a hunter who was the first to hug her after her rescue.

“I was among the first people who came into contact with it,” Gennaro Rosales, 48, told AFP in the Mexican port of Manzanillo (west), where the Australian ship disembarked on Tuesday.

With 13 years of fishing on the high seas, Rosales, originally from the (NW) resort town of Mazatlan, has been aboard the Mexican fishing trawler Maria Delia that set out from the days of the damaged boat where Shaddock, 54, and Bella survived on raw fish and rainwater.

The fisherman says he and three fellow castaways approached them using two boats. Two of them helped Shaddock, while Rosales and another got busy with the dog.

“She was happy when she saw us and wanted to jump quickly into the boat we had taken,” he recalls. Shaddock departed in April from La Paz (NW), on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, on a 6,000-kilometre journey to French Polynesia.

Before boarding, he meets Bella, who has been wandering the streets and, despite finding a home for the dog, has followed him everywhere. He decided to take her on his crossing. Their ship, named the Aloha Toa, is damaged after a severe storm in the eastern Pacific and they are left adrift.

“second father”

Rosales, a self-declared “lover of dogs and all animals,” cared for the first Bella, showing an interest that did not go unnoticed by Shaddock.

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“Timothy saw the treatment I gave Bella, the attention I gave her,” Rosales says. Concerned about the additional stress the dog might experience if she were taken to Australia, Shaddock asked if he could adopt her.

“I told him I love animals,” he says, smiling, “and I have a little dog, and I have cats and parrots, and I have everything! Well, he decided that I would be her second father.”

Rosales asserts that Bella, a mixed breed and about three years old, is “docile”, hardly barks and is in good physical condition, though she still needs vaccinations and time to get over the stress she has been subjected to.

“The (vet) told me yeah, she was a little nervous, because I was on the high seas,” he says. Attached to the hunter from day one, once Bella goes to Mazatlan she will meet her “new little brother” Vicente, a pug who Rosales admits is quite spoiled.

“My pets sleep in my bed, I turn on the air conditioner for them, they have all the privileges,” he says. On World Dog Day, which is celebrated in many countries on July 21, Rosales points out that for him these animals are like people and deserve the same treatment.

“It’s another family member who, whatever kind of animal you have in your home, needs to be well cared for and treated well,” he says.