Beast Overboard!!! Aussie Cattle Dog Survives Four Months off Feral Goats

A while back we brought you the heart-wrenching tale of Astro, a German Shephard who had been missing for 9 years, only to finally make his way back to his owners.

Well Sophie Tucker wasn’t gone quite as long as Astro was, but she might have a tad more amazing tale to tell.

Sophie Tucker, apparently named after a late US entertainer (?), fell overboard off the Queensland coast of Australia four months ago.

Sophie’s owners, Jan Griffith and family, were sailing through choppy waters when the Australian cattle dog fell overboard. The family believed Sophie had drowned at sea and grieved at their loss.

But inconceivably out of the family’s eyesight, Sophie was dog-paddlin’ away…. for FIVE NAUTICAL MILES!!!!!! The beast finally made it to land when she touched paws with the glorious sands of St. Bees Island.

Sophie 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.

As the rangers boat approached the mainland, the following scene took place:

“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 (apparently) she’d started eating baby goats,” she 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.”

So there you have it. Another awesome beast story, another happy ending resulting in a family reunion.