Pet Talk

Australian cattle dog Sophie Tucker spent her life as a pampered house pet, but when the going got rough, showed mettle that could put her human counterparts on *Survivor* to shame.
The plucky pooch was separated from her owners when she fell overboard in choppy waters, but swam five miles to an island, surviving on a diet of wild goats for four months until miraculously being reunited with her family.
*She surprised us all,* ecstatic owner Jan Griffith told the National Australian Associated Press News Agency. *She was a house dog and look what*s she done, she*s swum over five nautical miles, she*s managed to live off the land all on her own. We wish she could talk, we really do.*
Sophie*s mind-boggling survival story, chronicled on TODAY Tuesday, began as Jan and husband Dave took their pet along for a sailing trip off the coast of Australia last November. When the sea grew rough, Sophie dropped into the water.
*We searched well over an hour,* Jan Griffith told the Brisbane Times. *We thought once she hit the water she would have been gone because the wake from the boat was so big.*
Not so. Sophie * named after the bawdy American vaudeville entertainer * dog-paddled her way to the remote island of St. Bees, in Australia*s Great Barrier Reef. The island, largely bereft of humans, is known for its koala bear population, but island rangers were taken aback by the sight of a seemingly wild dog in their midst.
Griffith said she was told Sophie looked thin and mangy when first spotted, but told the AAP *all of the sudden she started to look good and it was when the rangers had found baby goat carcasses, so she started eating baby goats.*
Becoming wild in the wild
The family*s inside dog underwent a fundamental personality change to survive in the great outdoors. *She had become quite wild and vicious,* Griffith told the Brisbane Times. *She wouldn*t let anyone go near her or touch her. She wouldn*t take food from anybody.*
After four months, rangers finally managed to trap the dog. And when news broke that a wild dog had been captured on St. Bees, the Griffiths met up with a ranger*s boat bringing Sophie back to Australia*s mainland * and saw, it was indeed Sophie in tow.
The story of reuniting is one for the ages. *She*d been ferocious in the trap, but we called her and she started whimpering and crying, and so did everybody,* Griffith told NBC News.
*They let her out [of the cage] and she just about flattened us,* Griffith told the AAP. *She wriggled around like a mad thing.*
Sophie not only showed amazing adaptability living in the wild, but returning to domestic life * the Griffiths reported the dog*s transition to house dog once again has been seamless.
The dog*s survival story has even animal experts scratching their heads. Australian veterinarian Vicki Lomax told the Brisbane Times that Sophie*s is a hardy breed, but virtually no dog would have been likely to survive what she went through.
*Cattle dogs are probably the most suited type of dog to survive something like this, but it would have been a major ordeal for her,* Lomax said. *Five nautical miles is an incredibly big distance for any type of dog * she is lucky she wasn*t taken by a shark.*

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.