Dog gone — then home again, some 2,000 miles later

After disappearing during a storm at his Northern California home, a small corgi-shepherd mix has been located two months later and more than 2,000 miles away in Illinois.

- By RuBEN VIVES

DuPage County Animal Services

OPIE, who ran off during a storm, gets reacquainted with owner Ciara Babcock.

How the 5-year-old pooch made the cross-country trip is still a mystery.

Laura Flamion, an administrator at DuPage County Animal Services, on the outskirts of Chicago, said the dog was found on Sept. 28 and was turned in to the Itasca Police Department as a lost pet. There, police officers used a scanner to check if the dog had a microchip.

Once the chip was scanned, Flamion said, the microchip company reached out to the dog’s owner to let them know that their dog, named Opie, had been found in Illinois. Flamion said the owner told her she didn’t believe them. After all, the dog had been missing since July from its home in Bieber, Calif. — on the other side of the country.

The dog’s owner, Ciara Babcock, 30, said she received an email from the microchip company but did not think it was real because the town where her dog was discovered was so far from California.

“I was like, ‘There's no way that could be him,’ ” she said ina phone interview.