MONTREAL – It was a great night for a reunion at Trudeau Airport as Pollux the dog jumped back into the arms of its family after a 12-month, cross-country journey.
The animal ran away in June 2010 and mysteriously turned up last week in Kamloops. B.C.
“It’s like Christmas,” owner Isabelle Robitaille said when Pollux arrived from Vancouver just after midnight Friday.
“This is like a second New Year’s Eve for my children. My son Antoine was so happy when I told him they had found Pollux. It was his dog.”
The Labrador-greyhound mix bolted from the family home in east-end Montreal after Robitaille opened the back door. The woman spent months putting up posters to try to find the dog, but to no avail.
Then last Friday someone dropped a dog off at the SPCA in Kamloops. Staff scanned the dog with a microchip reader, and Robitaille’s information popped up.
“I just did not believe it, when they called me,” said Robitaille, a mother of three.
“But when I saw photos, I had to face the facts: my dog travelled 4,000 km.”
She thinks Pollux jumped onto a train, since the dog couldn’t have run the entire way.
Pollux will have to share its old house with a new addition — Candy. The family bought the second dog during Pollux’s absence. But Robitaille says her children never forgot the one that got away.
“There were so many nights when the children went to bed crying,” she said. “I didn’t know what to tell them.”
She’s not concerned about any jealousy between Pollux and Candy.
“There is room in our house, in our yard and in our hearts for both dogs,” she said. “It’s a story worthy of a Disney movie. I still can’t believe it.”