Dog Lost at Sea Four Months Discovered on Deserted Island

When the Griffiths' dog fell overboard during a sailing trip, the couple assumed she had drowned -- until she was discovered four months later on a small Australian island.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on April 27 2009

Photo Credit: Jon Connell

Last November, Australian couple Jan and Dave Griffith took their Australian cattle dog, Sophie Tucker, on a sailing trip off the coast of Queensland. The couple and their pet were having a wonderful time at sea until a storm struck one day. While the Griffiths worked to keep the boat on course, they turned away from Sophie. A moment later, she was gone. She had slipped overboard, and the couple feared that she had drowned.

“We were able to back-track to look for her, but because it was a grey day, we just couldn’t find her and we searched for well over an hour,” Jan Griffith told BBC News.

“We thought that once she had hit the water she would have been gone because the wake from the boat was so big.”

The Griffiths returned home in tears over the loss of their beloved pet. But four months later, they received some surprise news: Sophie had been found on a remote island, alive and well. She had swum five miles to shore after falling off the ship, and had survived since then by eating baby goats and other small animals.

The rangers who discovered her initially thought that Sophie was a wild dog, because she did not let people come near her. But when the Griffiths came to pick her up, Sophie immediately recognized her owners. After Jan Griffith called her name, “she started whimpering and banging the cage and when they let her out she just about flattened us,” she told the AAP news agency.

Her castaway adventure finally over, Sophie is doing well at home, relaxing by the pool and eating all the treats she wants. But Jan Griffith still can’t get over what her dog must have gone through to survive.

“She was a house dog and look what she’s done, she has swum over five nautical miles, she has managed to live off the land all on her own,” she told BBC News. “We wish she could talk, we truly do.”

Watch a video of Jan and Sophie from the BBC.

Filed under: Animals and Pets, General Interest, Weird,

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