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Massachusetts dog missing for 8 months found 175 miles away in Maine

Stock photo of a man and a dog.

PARIS, Maine — A king shepherd that vanished eight months ago is back home with his family after making a 175-mile trek from Massachusetts to Maine.

According to the Bangor Daily News, the Woollacott family of Ashby, Massachusetts, had been searching for the 5-year-old dog, Kaiser, since June, when he scaled a wall and escaped a woman who was looking after him. Tom Woollacott said he drove 1,500 miles over "three or four weeks" and even used a drone to try to find his four-legged friend.

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Little did Woollacott know, his luck would change several months later, when a woman from Bethel, Maine, contacted animal control about a dog she had been feeding for a few weeks. Officials captured the dog and brought him to Responsible Pet Care of Oxford Hills in Paris, Maine, on Feb. 6, the Daily News reported.

"He was timid, shy, and nobody really knew where he came from," said the shelter, who scanned him for a microchip and shared his photo on Facebook.

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Days later, there was a breakthrough.

"Day 5 came of his stray hold and we got a call from a lady in Massachusetts, saying she was watching this dog for about 6 hrs when he slipped his lead and took off, the last sighting was about 75 miles away from where she was located, that was 8 MONTHS AGO IN MASSACHUSETTS!!" the shelter wrote in a Facebook post.

Shelter officials eventually spoke with the dog's owner, who "was able to identify some things" on the dog "that no one else would know," the post said.

Let me tell you a story, it’s a fantastic story about never giving up. It starts like this; On 2/06/19 a stray dog was...

Posted by Responsible Pet Care of Oxford Hills on Friday, February 15, 2019

Woollacott drove to the shelter Friday and brought Kaiser back home, the Daily News reported.

Kaiser - Reunited after 8 months!

2/15/19 Amazing news out of Bethel Maine. MDM was contacted earlier this week by Maine Lost Dog Recovery about a dog that was trapped in Bethel Maine. Kaiser went missing in Ashby Mass in June 2018. There were a few sightings early on, but then the trail went cold.

Posted by Missing Dogs Massachusetts on Friday, February 15, 2019

But some parts of Kaiser's story remain a mystery.

"Did he get here himself? Was he taken? Was he picked up and then escaped again?" Responsible Pet care wrote. "We may never know, but we do know that his family never stopped looking, and today will be the happiest day for all of them."

Read more here.