Strange

Australian Castaway Dog Survives on Desert Island

by Jordan Yerman | April 12, 2009 at 03:35 pm

312 views | 29 Recommendations | 5 comments

An Australian cattle dog, washed overboard while on a boat trip with her owners, washed up on St. Bees island off the coast of Queensland.

There she went feral and lived off the land for four months until park rangers patrolling the island found her.

Sophie Tucker - named after the famous US entertainer - vanished as Jan and Dave Griffith sailed through stormy waters off Queensland last November.

But unknown to her grieving owners, the plucky dog survived a long swim across shark-infested waters to an island.

There she lived on a diet of baby goats until being found by visiting rangers.

There's not much I can really add to this story, except to extoll its awesomeness. Never understimate an animal's will to survive.

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Yuliya Talmazan

at 15:45 on April 12th, 2009

That is one smart, practical dog.

kuuva

at 20:08 on April 12th, 2009

great happy story, well i guess not for the baby goats.

lefty_liberated

at 22:05 on April 12th, 2009

Clearly Australian dogs are far superior to dogs anywhere else. :P ;)

mudricky

at 22:40 on April 12th, 2009

I'm rather fond of this story.

mudricky

at 23:11 on April 12th, 2009

David and Jan Griffith thought their pooch Sophie Tucker was gone for good after being washed overboard during a sailing trip off the Australian coast.
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Jan, of Sydney, said yesterday: “We hit a rough patch at sea and when we turned around the dog was gone. We searched for her for ages. It was terrible — we were convinced she had drowned.

“Now people are like, ‘Wow, how could she survive all that?’.

“We just wish she could talk and tell us all about it.”

Jan told how Sophie Tucker — named after the late music hall star — had apparently become “quite wild and vicious” on the island.

“She was whimpering in a cage, but when they let her out she just about flattened us.

“At that point there was not a dry eye in the house.

Despite being an old sea dog, she gave each of us a slurp on the cheek.”