Runaway dogs are often found wandering their neighbourhood after a few hours on the lam. But in a move that would put the Littlest Hobo to shame, a Labrador mix from the Montreal area is on her way home one year and 4,500 kilometres after dashing from her owner's backyard.
In June of last year, Pollux escaped through an open gate in the backyard of her owner Isabelle Robitaille's home. While the family has another dog, named Candy, Robitaille said her children began asking her about Pollux as the anniversary of her disappearance neared.
"They were telling me, ‘Mommy, it's a year, where's my Pollux?'" Robitaille told CTV Montreal.
On Canada Day, Robitaille received a telephone call from the SCPA, telling her that Pollux had been found. But it was not the Montreal chapter calling. It was the SPCA in Kamloops, more than 4,500 kilometres away.
"How can you imagine a year later you find your dog? It was a big, big, big surprise when they called us," Robitaille said.
Officials in B.C. told Robitaille that a good Samaritan had found Pollux and turned her in to a local shelter. Officials at the Kamloops SPCA were able to determine where Pollux had come from thanks to information stored in a microchip implanted in her neck.
Robitaille adopted Pollux in 1995 from the Montreal SPCA, which has a standing policy to ensure all animals get a microchip before they are adopted.
"I think the lesson learned here is how important permanent identification like microchips are," Alanna Devine of the Montreal SPCA told CTV.
Robitaille said she cannot afford the cost of shipping Pollux home, so a local benefactor has stepped in to pay the bill.
But one question remains unanswered -- how exactly did Pollux get to the West Coast?
"The family has no connections here on the West Coast," said Sarah Gerow of the B.C. SPCA. "So how she got from there to here, really only she knows."
With a report from CTV Montreal's Maya Johnson
