A dog missing from its California home for more than a year has been found alive and well – albeit 1,600 miles away in Kansas.
No one knows how Zeppelin, a three-year-old German shepherd mix, made the journey across a giant swath of the United States, but he is alive and well and is now heading home for Christmas, NPR reported.
Zeppelin went missing from his home in West Sacramento in October 2021, his owner, Sandra O’Neill, told the public radio network. The family suspected that he had befriended workers on a local construction site and someone had decided to keep him.
“I have no proof but I think somebody down there fell in love with him and took him home,” O’Neill said.
But after 14 months of no news, a call out of the blue came from Louisburg, Kansas, where a woman had found Zeppelin in her garden and taken him to a vet who had used the microchip under his skin to trace him to his family back on America’s Pacific coast.
“I was floored. Just shocked when they told me,” O’Neill said.
Zeppelin has now become a minor media celebrity and a press conference is planned for his arrival back in California after a road trip by car. There, another surprise waits for him. Just a few weeks before going missing, Zeppelin had fathered a litter of puppies. Two of them were kept by his family and will be waiting for their doggy dad’s return.
“He was the best doggy daddy,” O’Neill told NPR “He’s going to be so happy.”
