My Manifesto: The Incoherent Ramblings of a Madman

- When six-month-old Jack Russell puppy Toby, startled by a gunshot, leapt off a 70-foot (21-metre) cliff and into a busy shipping lane, his owners presumed it was the last they would see of their beloved pet.

But Toby was made of stronger stuff.

In exploits recounted by a series of newspapers on Thursday, the white-and-tan terrier puppy survived the sheer drop and plunged into Plymouth Sound, a famously busy waterway off the southwest coast.

Undeterred by boat traffic in the estuary, regularly used by warships, submarines and ferries, Toby paddled a mile (1.6 kilometres) across the bay, where a Ministry of Defence boat crew, alerted to his plight, found him perched shivering on a rock.

Wrapped in a blanket, the unharmed dog was returned to his astonished owners, David and Sandra Lee.

"We honestly thought we'd lost him," Mr Lee was quoted as saying in the Daily Mail newspaper. "It's a true miracle he's still with us."

Toby leapt over a wall on the edge of the cliff top when he was startled by a gunshot from a nearby army barracks, Lee added.

"He must have thought it was just a wall, without knowing there was a sheer drop of 70 foot on the other side."