Dog reunites with owner after falling off a boat and swimming several miles to safety

Captain Keith "Kiwi" Soffes of Texas, a shrimp boat captain, lost his dog while boating with him. Monster, the dog, often joins her owner on his shrimp boat, but she slipped overboard.

Soffes spoke to KRIV, "We just headed back to the dock. Monster was doing her regular old thing that she's always done. Goes back there and barks at the birds, does the Monster thing." He added, "We got to where we're going to load the net up on the back of the boat to come home, and she always goes back there, grabs the net, and starts pulling on it. And then she wasn't there."

The shrimp boat captain stated that when he discovered Monster was missing, he spun the boat around in an attempt to retrieve her but was unsuccessful. Soffes wept as he remembered the time he believed he'd never see his puppy again. He said, "I said, 'Where she at?' It was the middle of the bay, pretty much. I mean, you know, open water, four or five miles from any type of land." 

He added, "My heart just fell. I couldn't even speak, but I turned around, I got my GPS coordinates, and I said, 'We're going to find her.' I looked up and down the coast." He posted the incident on Facebook, hoping that by some chance, his lovely puppy would make it to shore, but days passed with no news. Soffes was upset since this was the first time the pair had been separated for any length of time. 

He wrote in the caption, "I lost the one thing in this world that I truly loved. My best friend. Monster dog. We don't really know what happened. We think she fell off the boat on a slick calm day.. she had been on the boat her whole life." He added, "I searched and searched.. hopefully somebody picked her up. We were around marker number 71. If anyone here's any talk about her please contact me. Totally heartbroken."

Soffes told KRIV that five days after Monster went missing, he received a good but unlikely lead. He said, "Five days went by. I started posting more and more and more and more, and a lady said, 'I saw a dog like that at the park.' I said, 'She couldn't have made it that swim. There's no way that dog swam that far." 

Soffes spotted his beloved pet at the nearby trailer park listed in the lead after searching the neighborhood. He explained his delight, "I was crying so hard I couldn't even talk. She was giving me so many kisses. I think her swimming every day saved her life. Just her being on the boat, being used to the water." 

Cover Image Source: Keith Soffes/Facebook