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Rescued dog back with owner after drifting at sea for 3 weeks

24 Comments

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24 Comments
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Unbelievable! It could be a legendary symbol of survivors.

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They should put a statue of Ban next to Hachiko.

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Ban! I smell movie, books, television specials in the years to come!

Excellent survival dog!

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Oh Jesus...get ready for banchan this & banchan that for weeks & weeks.

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it is miracle. she soon become famous in books and movies.

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How did the dog survive? No water or food?

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An incredible survival story. The house floating out there on the ocean was his Noah's Ark.

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the dog looked way too healthy to me - there is somthing fishy about this story...

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I reckon that, bobcatfish...

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Yep good ole hollywood CGI and a guy in a dog suit.

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So nice to see a happy ending for that doggy and it's owner, makes a change from seeing death, misery and sadness. I am so happy for them.

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When I heard it, I thought the dog was on wreckage on the beach that then drifted out to sea when tide came in. ie, just a few days b4 being rescued, not 3 wks. I mean, who knows, but ppl can't go w/o water for more than a week, right?

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It definately is an amazing thing to read. I remember it being on Cdn TV news & apparently the dog sort of wandered here of there before he rescue people could get it to jump over other pieces of debris & looked health. Still when you think of it a normal dog does not need a LOT of food & might have found something (?) to eat on the floating debebris.

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while it did look pretty healthy,,it could have being one of those over loved animals that usually weighs as much as a sumo, so was able to live of its own fat for a few weeks, slimming down to normal size just a thought, maybe he was real good at fishing....

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It's better than a fairytale ending. Ban-chan, dog of the year, a symbol of endurance.

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I'm so happy about Ban!! I wish she was my dog.. ;) I don't care how she managed to survive, or the circunstances about her rescue, the important is that she was able to find her owner at the end, as she surely is a part of that family too.. What an adorable history, as many others we hear in the middle of all this disaster, it gives us hope and a reason to smile :)

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I saw the discovery and rescue on the news over the weekend. Now just this headline brings tears to my eyes.

I'm so happy to hear that the evacuation centre allows pets!

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As for how Ban-chan got water, it has snowed numerous times over the past 3 weeks. Dogs are probably better equipped to get water from eating snow than humans, but there were also probably puddles of meltwater that collected in bends and curves of twisted debris.

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Nice =/

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Floating at sea for 3 weeks with no food or water??? Is this accurate? Something lost in translation here? I don't know how a dog's metabolism works, but that's hard to believe. Why would this story even be published without some sort of explanation? I'm just going to assume that the dog was found at a much earlier point in time (like days after the tsunami), and was taken in by this animal shelter, and reunited with its owner 3 weeks after the tsunami???

Moderator: The story is correct.

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Hmmm Im curious how a dog can survive for 3 weeks without food.. yet alone a human being surviving that long.. he would make a good PR mascot for a dog food company

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anglootaku and Tahoochi, you can find the video if you google "dog rescued tsunami". SMH.com.au has it. Angloo, FYI, people need water, long before they need food. And 3 weeks without food isn't actually that long for an adult. Dangerously long, yes. Incredibly long, no.

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"Gojira" the radioactive dog.

'Oh, no, they say he's got to go Go go Godzilla Oh, no, there goes Tokyo Go go Godzilla

History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man Godzilla! '

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Ban "the wonder dog" appears to be in remarkably good health for being left along for 3 weeks. She IS a survivor. While she didn't have anyone to open bags/cans of food for her, she must have been able to find something to eat. I'm not sure I want to think about what or who she's been dining on. The first time she was spotted, she was floating in a large area of wreckage and she was able to elude her rescuers so she must have had a few places to hide. A swimming dog is not that difficult to catch. Pockets of rain and snow would have provided enough fresh, if not clean, water but I wonder how radiated that water was?

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