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Subject: Dog overboard found four months later
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Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:12:48 -0500
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Dog overboard found four months later
AFP
Griffith shows cattle dog Sophie Tucker, a pet dog that fell overboard
Mon Apr 6, 4:21 am ET
Australia has been reunited with its owners after surviving alone on
an island for four months, reports said.
Sophie Tucker, apparently named after a late US entertainer, fell
overboard as Jan Griffith and her family sailed through choppy waters
off the northeast Queensland coast in November.
The dog was believed to have drowned and Griffith said the family was
devastated.
But out of sight of the family, Sophie Tucker was swimming doggedly
and finally made it to St Bees Island, five nautical miles away, and
began the sort of life popularised by the TV reality show "Survivor."
She was returned to her family last week when Griffith contacted
rangers who had captured a dog that had been living off feral goats on
the largely uninhabited island, in the faint hope it might be their
long-lost pet.
When the Griffiths met the rangers' boat bringing the dog to the
mainland they found that it was indeed Sophie Tucker on board.
"We called the dog and she started whimpering and banging the cage and
they let her out and she just about flattened us," Griffith told the
national AAP news agency.
"She wriggled around like a mad thing."
Griffith said that when the dog was first spotted on the island she
had been in poor condition.
"And then all of a sudden she started to look good and it was when the
rangers had found baby goat carcasses so she'd started eating baby
goats," she said.
Sophie Tucker, a member of the Australian cattle dog breed, had been
quick to readjust to the comforts of home, complete with
airconditioning, Griffiths said.
"She surprised us all. She was a house dog and look what she's done,
she's swum over five nautical miles, she's managed to live off the
land all on her own," Griffiths said.
"We wish she could talk, we truly do."
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