{"id":11073,"date":"2016-03-18T08:02:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/pup-found-5-weeks-after-falling-overboard\/"},"modified":"2016-03-18T08:02:01","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:02:01","slug":"pup-found-5-weeks-after-falling-overboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/pup-found-5-weeks-after-falling-overboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Pup found 5 weeks after falling overboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN DIEGO \u2014<\/strong> It sounds like a pitch for a far-fetched movie: \u201cCast Away,\u201d but with a dog instead of Tom Hanks. Only this sea tale is true.<\/p>\n

A California fisherman\u2019s beloved German shepherd fell overboard and was presumed drowned. More than a month later, she was found.<\/p>\n

The 1\u00bd-year-old dog named Luna was spotted this week on San Clemente Island, a Navy-owned training base 70 miles off San Diego.<\/p>\n

The blue-eyed pup disappeared Feb. 10 as Nick Haworth, a commercial fisherman from San Diego, worked on a boat 2 miles from the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were pulling in their traps, and one minute Luna was there, and the next minute she was gone,\u201d said Sandy DeMunnik, spokeswoman for Naval Base Coronado. \u201cThey looked everywhere for her. They couldn\u2019t see her. The water was dark, and she\u2019s dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haworth notified Navy personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe insisted that he was 90 percent sure that she made it to shore because she was such a strong swimmer,\u201d DeMunnik said.<\/p>\n

Haworth searched the waters for about two days and Navy staff searched the island for about a week but found no sign of Luna.<\/p>\n

She was presumed lost at sea. Until Tuesday, that is, when staff arriving for work at the island\u2019s Naval Auxiliary Landing Field spotted something unusual \u2014 a dog sitting by the side of the road. Domestic animals aren\u2019t allowed on the island for environmental reasons.<\/p>\n

It was Luna.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was just sitting there wagging her tail,\u201d DeMunnik said. The staff called to Luna, and she came right over.<\/p>\n

A biologist then examined the dog and found her a little thin but otherwise healthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like she was surviving on rodents and dead fish that had washed up,\u201d DeMunnik said.<\/p>\n

Officials called Haworth, who was out of state, working in the middle of a lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was overwhelmed. He was so happy and grateful and thrilled,\u201d DeMunnik said.<\/p>\n

Luna was flown to a Navy base on the mainland Wednesday and handed over to Haworth\u2019s best friend, who will care for the dog until Haworth returns Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Luna, meanwhile, has a souvenir of the experience. Her dog tag was lost but the Navy gave her a new one, DeMunnik said.<\/p>\n

Along with her name, it bears a key lesson in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course taught on the island to Navy and Marine personnel. The tag reads: \u201cKeep the Faith.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN DIEGO \u2014 It sounds like a pitch for a far-fetched movie: \u201cCast Away,\u201d but with a dog instead of Tom Hanks. Only this sea tale is true. A California fisherman\u2019s beloved German shepherd fell overboard and was presumed drowned. More than a month later, she was found. The 1\u00bd-year-old dog named Luna was spotted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11073"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}