But as Sharp walked in her daughter's back yard off Oakpoint Circle late Sunday afternoon, a hole in the ground swallowed the 57-year-old woman, sending Bouncer running away, trailing his leash.
Neighbors sweeping their drive had seen Sharp walking the dog, but Ceil Moyers quickly learned something was wrong moments later when two young boys on their bikes approached her with Bouncer in tow.
Then they heard yelling they couldn't place.
" 'Help! Get me out of here!' -- those were the words she was using," Moyers recalled Sunday evening as more than 50 firefighters, including two Orange County special-operations units, worked to extract Sharp from the 10-foot-deep hole.
Moyers, her husband, Kagey, and the boys -- Nathan Lundberg, 13, and Pierson Monetti, 12 -- at first couldn't figure out where the shouts were coming from.
Then they noticed the hole -- no larger than a manhole at ground level -- nestled among the live oaks and an orange tree in the yard of Connie Oster, Sharp's daughter, where Sharp has been living since April.
The boys crawled to the edge, following the orders of Kagey Moyers.
"She was scared. She was crying a little," Pierson said.
"But after a while she started laughing," Nathan said. "She said, 'The ground swallowed me up.' "
Ceil Moyers called 911 shortly before sundown, around 5:30 p.m., and the quiet Oakwater Estates neighborhood of 1-acre home sites on a peninsula on Lake McCoy quickly was swarming with rescuers and the curious.
Sharp, who fell about 10 feet into a round, smooth-walled hole with a flat bottom of sugar sand, complained of back pain. So firefighters worked carefully and meticulously, first to stabilize the hole and then to lift her out using a spine-supporting harness.
Rescue workers approached the hole on plywood sheets borrowed from a Jehovah's Witness meeting hall, crawling on hands and knees under floodlights.
Using a ladder extended about 40 feet from the road, rescue workers erected pulley systems. By about 7:30 p.m., they were able to lower Scott Turner, a firefighter-paramedic, into the hole.
Officials aren't sure what caused the hole or whether it was a traditional sinkhole. While the hole was small at the surface, it broadened underground to an area big enough for Sharp to be on her back.
Lt. Winston Russell of Orange County Fire-Rescue said the hole was more likely the result of a rotted stump and root system from a long-gone tree.
"They might want a geologist to check it out," Russell said. "But I'm 99 percent sure. I've never seen a flat-bottomed sinkhole."
Sunday morning's heavy rains might have contributed to the ground giving way under Sharp's feet, officials said.
Oster watched her mother's rescue from the yard, taking turns with her husband, Tim, as they also cared for Sharp's 100-year-old mother. The centenarian had fallen and scraped her arm while the Osters were out watching the rescue.
"You see these out-of-the-way places on TV, something like this that you never think would happen to you," Connie Oster said. "It's so weird."
Oster's cousin, Randy Nault of College Park, was standing beside her. He and Sharp, his aunt, have walked their two dogs together for years.
Comforting Oster, he said he knew the accident would have a happy ending.
As rescuers slowly hoisted Sharp from the hole just before 8 p.m., the crowd of onlookers cheered. After lifting her from the hole, rescuers lowered her onto a backboard. On their hands and knees, the workers carefully slid Sharp across the yard and onto a gurney.
As Sharp was wheeled away on a stretcher, rescue workers stopped to let her family members talk to her briefly. Sharp was taken to Florida Hospital Apopka.
"She'll be all right," Nault said. "She had a strong grip. She gripped all of our hands."
