Alaskan dog back home after 240km sea-ice jaunt and polar bear encounter

Australian shepherd Nanuq is in good health after his return home

Nanuq, centre, with Brooklyn Faith, after his return to Gambell, Alaska, while Zoey, left, holds Starlight and Ty holds Kujo. Photo: Mandy Iworrigan via AP

A year-old Australian shepherd dog took an epic trek across 240 kilometres of frozen Bering Sea ice during which he was bitten by a seal or polar bear before he was returned to his home in Alaska.

Last month, Mandy Iworrigan, who lives in Gambell, Alaska, and her family were visiting Savoonga, another St Lawrence Island community in the Bering Strait, when Nanuq disappeared with their other family dog, Starlight, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Starlight turned up a few weeks later, but Nanuq, which means polar bear in Siberian Yupik, was nowhere to be found.

About a month after Nanuq disappeared, people in Wales, 240km north-east of Savoonga on Alaska’s western coast, began posting pictures online of what they described as a lost dog.

“My dad texted me and said, ‘There’s a dog that looks like Nanuq in Wales’,” Ms Iworrigan said.

She reactivated her Facebook account to see if it might be her wandering hound.

“I was like, ‘No freakin’ way! That’s our dog! What is he doing in Wales?’” she said.

The events of Nanuq’s journey will probably always be a mystery.

“I have no idea why he ended up in Wales. Maybe the ice shifted while he was hunting,” Ms Iworrigan said. “I’m pretty sure he ate leftovers of seal or caught a seal. Probably birds, too. He eats our Native foods. He’s smart.”

She used airline points to get her dog back to Gambell on a regional air service last week, a charter that was transporting athletes for the Bering Strait School District’s Native Youth Olympics tournament.

Ms Iworrigan filmed the happy reunion when the plane landed at the air strip in Savoonga, as she and her daughter Brooklyn shrieked with joy.

Except for a swollen leg and large bite marks from an unidentified animal, Nanuq was in pretty good health.

“Wolverine, seal, small nanuq, we don’t know, because it’s like a really big bite,” she said.