When White met the pit bull puppy in 2018, Darby was young, playful, strong as an ox. Then, in the summer of 2019, came Darby's date with destiny.
White was fishing in Northern California's Bodega Bay. He left Darby, then a year old and 100 pounds, in the parked car with windows down, while he cast his line a few yards away. The fish weren't biting, White recalls, until, suddenly, they were.
At first, White thought he had hooked a stingray. But as he reeled （绕线）it in, he realized it was a seven gill shark, about 6 feet long. Not uncommon, but still dangerous. He brought it close and carefully unhooked it, expecting it to swim away. It didn't. The shark bit his ankle.
All of a sudden there was blood everywhere, says White. He yelled for help, hoping the fishermen down the beach could hear. But they didn't seem to know what was going on. Fortunately, Darby did. He jumped out of the car and ran toward the water. He ran right up to the shark and sank his teeth into its gills （鱼鳃）.
"That just made the shark bite down harder," Mr. White says. Darby backed off, then regrouped and attacked the shark's tail. The shark released its grip （紧抓）, and White managed to push it into shallow water, where it swam off. "The whole thing took less than a minute," White says, "but it left plenty of damage." White was able to stop the bleeding and get to a hospital, where he learned that the wound was very severe.
That would've been the end of it, had Darby's story not gone viral. White was contacted by NBC News and CNN. That's when the countless cash offers started to come in. But the big dog was not for sale.
