Pet arrives home, dog-tired, after Alaskan sea-ice odyssey

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — (AP) — A 1-year-old Australian shepherd took an epic trek throughout 150 miles (241 kilometers) of frozen Bering Sea ice that included being bitten by a seal or polar bear earlier than he was safely returned to his dwelling in Alaska.

Mandy Iworrigan, Nanuq’s proprietor who lives in Gambell, Alaska, and her household have been visiting Savoogna, one other St. Lawrence Island neighborhood within the Bering Strait, final month when Nanuq disappeared with their different household canine, Starlight, the Anchorage Every day Information reported.

Starlight turned up a number of weeks later, however Nanuq, which suggests polar bear in Siberian Yupik, was nowhere to be discovered.

A few month after Nanuq disappeared, folks in Wales, 150 miles (241 kilometers) northeast of Savoonga on Alaska’s western coast, started posting photos on-line of what they described as a misplaced canine.

“My dad texted me and stated, ‘There’s a canine that appears like Nanuq in Wales,’” Iworrigan stated.

She reactivated her Fb account to see if it may be her wandering hound.

“I used to be like, ‘No freakin’ manner! That’s our canine! What’s he doing in Wales?’” she stated.

The occasions of Nanuq’s journey will possible at all times be a thriller.

“I do not know why he ended up in Wales. Perhaps the ice shifted whereas he was looking,” Iworrigan stated. “I’m fairly positive he ate leftovers of seal or caught a seal. In all probability birds, too. He eats our Native meals. He’s good.”

She used airline factors to get her canine again to Gambell on a regional air service final week, a constitution that was transporting athletes for the Bering Strait Faculty District’s Native Youth Olympics match.

Iworrigan filmed the comfortable reunion when the aircraft landed on the air strip in Savoonga, with each she and her daughter Brooklyn shrieking with pleasure.

Aside from a swollen leg, with massive chew marks from an unidentified animal, Nanuq was in fairly good well being.

“Wolverine, seal, small nanuq, we don’t know, as a result of it’s like a extremely huge chew,” she stated.

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