A B.C. resident is very happy to have her beloved dog back home again after she was found swimming off the Sunshine Coast.
Sherry Duncan was out in a boat Tuesday fishing and her little dog Thorne was sitting in her favourite spot in the rear.
Duncan went into the cabin for a few moments but when she came out, Thorne was missing.
“That is when all the horror part of my afternoon started,” Duncan told Global News.
They immediately started a grid search but the dog was nowhere to be found.
After they arrived home disheartened and distraught, Duncan said she received a phone call saying someone had found Thorne.
“I never knew a miracle could happen, it really did. A miracle.”
Turns out, Thorne had been in the water for over an hour when Terry Watling found her.
He was out on the water heading up Malaspina Strait when he saw what he thought was an otter.
As he got closer, he realized it was a dog.
“It had a sad look on its face,” Watling told Global News. “It was kind of swimming towards us as we passed by.”
He said she was very cold and wet.
Watling got on the radio and issued an all-points bulletin about a lost dog.
Another boater told Watling about Duncan losing her dog and they were able to meet up to return Thorne home.
“As you can imagine, she was very tired,” Duncan said. “One thing we do have to be careful with, with dogs that are in the water for a long time, is they can actually get toxicities from too much salt or too much water.”
So Thorne is under strict watch.
Duncan is now getting a dog life jacket but she’s not sure Thorne will ever be allowed on a boat again.
“We still have no idea what happened,” she said.