Montreal pooch safe after incredible journey to B.C.

A Montreal pooch that disappeared last year has miraculously turned up some 4,500 kilometres away in Kamloops, B.C., after taking a mysterious cross-country journey that nobody but the dog may ever understand.

The black Labrador named Pollux was previously not known as the adventurous type according to her owner, Isabelle Robitaille.

Pollux is afraid of the water and detests the rain. But on June 20 last year she took an adventurous turn, fleeing through a gate mistakenly left open at her east-end Montreal home .

Robitaille said the family searched high and low, but had given up hope they'd ever find the dog they had saved from the SPCA in 2005.

Then on Canada Day 2011, they received a shocking phone call from the SPCA in Kamloops: a dog with a tracking chip containing her information was found in B.C.

Photos sent by the shelter confirmed it, Robitaille said. Pollux was alive and well although a bit leaner than before.

"They told me she was in excellent condition," Robitaille said.

The Labrador retriever had been named Suki by her saviours in the southern interior city of Kamloops, B.C. But just how she got to B.C. remains a mystery.

On the day she disappeared from the family backyard, it had been raining and Robitaille suspects she might have hopped into a freight train to avoid the rain. But she says it's also possible that she was picked up by a trucker or a family heading west.

A woman in B.C. found her and gave her a home for three weeks until Pollux could find a place in the Kamloops shelter.  So only Pollux knows the secret of what happened.

"We don't know," said Robitaille. "And she can't talk."

Getting home won't nearly be as big an ordeal: Pollux will be flying home courtesy SPCA International, who'll foot the bill.

"She's going to be nine this summer so she's going to be home for her birthday," Robitaille said.