Thread by @ianjamesyoung70

On This Day, 17 years ago, a lost dog walked into our home in Australia while workers were delivering a refrigerator

We assumed, wrongly, he was theirs. They assumed, wrongly, he was ours. He did not care and made himself at home by jumping into my wife's lap and immediately falling asleep

We fed him & wondered WTF, this is amazing. We left the doors open thinking, ok, maybe he lives nearby & will go home. Nope. But a few hours later, after eating most of a loaf of bread, he saw a family walking by on the riverfront and scampered off to join them. Kids were v happy

So we marked that down as weird, but resolved. Next morning we are driving down the main drag along the river (this is Noosa, the Aussie beach town) AND THE DOG IS TROTTING AROUND COMPLETELY BY HIMSELF. I stop, wife opens the door and he JUMPS IN THE CAR

We end up taking him to the RSPCA after checking how long they hold strays before, um, sending them onto the rainbow bridge

So, the happy ending is this: we drove up to visit him a couple days later, and he was still there and we were thinking that this dog better get picked up soon or we are dog owners. Another two days, and we get a call: the owners, from Victoria, 2,000km away have got him

They were on holidays when he bolted, apparently. Anyway, we gave him a name during our short time together, and my wife still sometimes has dreams about Grub the terrier

(she actually had this photo framed and says it is her fondest memory of living in Australia. FYI, we were married in Australia)

(And no, the walking family had NOTHING to do with Grub. Just another bunch of randoms he decided to latch onto for a bit)