An Australian shepherd made an epic journey of 241 kilometers through the frigid waters of the Bering Sea after being bitten by a seal or polar bear before returning safely to his home in Alaska, USA.
Nanuk’s owner Mandy Ivorigan and her family from Campbell, Alaska, were visiting Savogna, another community in St. Petersburg. Lawrence in the Bering Strait last month when an Australian shepherd went missing with another family dog, Starlight, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Starlight appeared a few weeks later, but Nanuk, meaning polar bear in the Siberian Yupik language, was nowhere to be seen.
A month after the one-year-old Nanuk went missing, people in Wales, about 150 miles northeast of Savonka on Alaska’s west coast, began posting photos of the lost dog on social media.
“My dad texted me saying, ‘There’s a dog in Wales that looks like Nanuk,'” Ivorigan said.
Nanuk’s owner reactivated his Facebook account to confirm if it could be the missing dog.
The concrete adventures of Nanuk during his odyssey will forever remain a mystery. “I don’t know how it ended up in Wales. Maybe the snow moved while I was hunting,” Ivorigan said. “I’m sure he ate seal scraps or hunted a seal. Maybe even birds. He eats our country food. He’s smart,” she added.
Iworrigan filmed their happy reunion last week as the plane touched down on the runway at Savonga.
Apart from a swollen foot, Nanuk is in good health with large bite marks from an unidentified animal.