Two tales from Hawai'i...
A small cargo ship had a fire aboard and the crew abandoned ship some distance offshore... all but the dog. The fire ultimately self-extinguished. Currents being what they are, it took some days to get anyone to the ship to salvage it, which was drifting about in the Central Pacific. The dog was located aboard, none the worse for wear and was brought back to Honolulu and reunited with the ship's Chinese captain. This human interest story made the papers and TV news, and the captain was asked the dog's name. The cynical among us believed it had been changed from: "Dinner".
One fine day I had duty, but wasn't flying. One of the other helicopters happened upon a sailboat that lost its keel and turned turtle and sank in the blink of an eye, depositing the couple and their shepherd mix in the drink in the Molokai Channel. The crew winched up the couple and the dog (duly in his lifejacket). Upon arrival at our base, the dog thanked everyone he saw in a flight suit... which of course was pretty nearly everybody.