Gust-blown Manhattan pooch survives 5-floor fall

A Manhattan pooch is said to have survived after a gust of wind blew him off his owner's 11th-floor terrace in TriBeCa and sent him five stories down and 30 feet east to a rooftop.

Alfie, a 4-year-old, 10-pound silky terrier, miraculously walked away from the flight with just a few bruises and scratches and a cut lip.

"It was like The Wizard of Oz, and he was Toto," the New York Post quoted Jessica Gould, a neighbour who rescued Alfie, as saying.

The dog was swept from the Independence Plaza complex on the afternoon of May 3 after a thunderstorm whipped up.

"It had to be a horrible, horrible quick wind because he definitely doesn't jump," his owner, Sarann Lindenauer, 67, said.

Lindenauer had left her terrace's door open to let in the warm breezes earlier in the day. She said she left her apartment for five minutes and came back to find Alfie had vanished.

"I ran all over the house calling his name. I looked down on the plaza and onto the landing of the town houses," the grandmother recalled. 

Luckily, Gould, who lives in a different tower of the complex, had been looking out at the storm from her seventh-floor window and spotted Alfie -- five flights down.

Gould headed to Alfie's landing spot and found him standing in the rain.

"I brought him down to the lobby. Then [the doorman] grabbed a towel and said, 'This is Alfie. Oh, my, God. This is Alfie. He came from the 11th floor'," she revealed.

Lindenauer was called and reunited with Alfie.

"I always keep my door open, but no more. He doesn't exactly love being out there now," she added.