Lassie lookalike finds love after five-week fling
A Lassie lookalike who spent five weeks living as a stray has found love with an ex-show dog after being reunited with his owner in New Zealand.
Westport resident Gay Sweeney feared she had seen the last of Storm, her beloved pet collie, after he escaped from her van at the Buller Bridge at the end of May.
“When I didn’t get any sightings for two or three days I had those black weekends when I’d think, why have we not heard anything?” Sweeney, who runs a bed and breakfast guesthouse, told the Westport News.
“I just had to trust Westport folk. The hard part was turning off the imagination about where he might be, like in a drain. You just have to have faith – it’s like a human being going missing.”
But Sweeney continued to hunt tirelessly for the animal, covering up to 200 kilometres a day chasing down sightings. Eventually a dog trap baited with Storm’s favourite rug and a smelly bone reunited Sweeney with her wayward pet.
Sweeney said Storm had “shivered and shook” when she had taken him home but had quickly re-adjusted to domestic life. “He’s loving, inquisitive – a little cuddle-and-play machine. He loves social contact.”
Storm has also become close friends with an ex-show dog called Aria. “He’s teaching her how to play,” said Sweeney.
But Sweeney added that she was taking no chances and had booked Storm in for obedience lessons.
“When you run a bed and breakfast, people leave gates and doors open so he has had several opportunities already to go but he hasn’t, he just stays… But you never know with a dog – they are dogs and they do doggy things.”