Sophie Tucker is Alive!
I have always been a cat person. That does not mean I do not love dogs, in fact, I have almost always had a dog as well as several cats. I love dogs for their company and their willingness to be obedient, I love cats for their bloody-mindedness, and their independence. You can ask a cat to do something and he/she will look at you knowingly, then frown, as if to say ‘well I may, or then again, I may not’, then have a stretch and completely ignore you. I always have the feeling with my cats that if I ever were to suddenly die, they would survive, not maybe in the luxury to which they are accustomed, but they would manage. Whereas I felt that my dogs would probably just give up the ghost when no-one fed them anymore, and would join me wherever I have gone.
Therefore, it was really nice to read an article about a dog called Sophie Tucker (named after the American vaudeville star of the same name). Sophie is an Australian Cattle Dog.
I am not sure why her owners called her Sophie Tucker, I guess they may have been fans of Sophie. In November of 2008 the family went sailing off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The seas were very choppy and Sophie fell overboard. Anyone who has been sailing knows it is hard to pick up a human being that is co-operative when they are in the water, and unfortunately the family were unable to pick up the dog. They cut short their sailing trip and went home, feeling devastated that their beloved Sophie was lost forever.
Four months after Sophie drowned, the family got a phone call asking them to meet some people who had caught a dog on a nearly deserted island off the coast of Queensland, the dog answered the description of Sophie. The island was 5 nautical miles from the place where Sophie went overboard. The family of course responded to the phone call, with very little hope that this dog would be theirs, but when they called the dog’s name she started whimpering and whining like a mad thing and when the people who caught her let her out of the cage, she ran into the arms of her family. It really was Sophie Tucker.
Apparently the dog had swum for something like 5 miles to get to a semi-deserted island, mainly inhabited by goats. It appears that she lived on little baby-goats until a boat happened to anchor at the island. The sailors on the boat spotted the dog and realised she should not have been there. They managed to capture her and put a report on the radio that they had caught an Australian Cattle Dog.
Because the family had put in a lost dog report, they were reunited with their beloved Sophie. Needless to say, a lot of tears were shed at this reunion.
I cannot imagine how they must have felt. Four months of thinking their dog was dead, four months of feeling guilty for having taken her sailing in the first place, and then suddenly the relief to find she was still alive. Apparently Sophie settled back into the comforts of home life very easily and has not tried to catch her own food again since then.
I really loved this story and has given me renewed respect for my own dog. Though I hope I will never lose him in the way Sophie was lost, it has made me realise that my dog too has an innate survival instinct that will kick in when necessary.
The original Sophie Tucker was one of the most famous singers and comediennes of the first two thirds of the 20th Century. She was referred to as the ‘Last of the Red Hot Mamas’ . She made famous such songs as ‘Some of these Days’ and ‘My Yiddishe Momme’. She was a large woman and was initially made to wear ‘black face’ make-up because her managers felt she would too fat and ugly to be accepted as she was. When she stopped wearing the black-face make-up one day, because she had forgotten to pack it, she became even more popular, and never wore the make-up again. She died in 1966.
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