A dog that was missing for the past month is now back home with his owners in Wisconsin after a group of boaters spotted the dog bobbing in the middle of a lake.

The dog, a 6-year-old yellow Labrador retriever named Moose, ran away four weeks ago while being cared for by a petsitter.



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On Monday, four girls out on a pontoon boat in Pewaukee Lake saw a dog bobbing in the water and set out to rescue him.

“We knew eventually it would get tired, so it was pretty urgent for us to make sure he was okay,” one of the boaters, Jessica Dundon, told local ABC station WISN-TV.

Another boater, Klaire Nerdahl, told WISN-TV she pulled Moose out from the water and then handed him to her friend, Isabelle Herdeman, who helped create a leash for Moose by using a ring attached to a rope on the boat.

The boaters took the dog to the local police department. Officers there contacted the Elmbrook Humane Society, which sent staff members to pick up Moose.

“We brought him back here and went through the normal process of scanning him for a microchip,” Heather Gehrke, Elmbrook Humane Society’s executive director, told ABC News.

Gehrke said the microchip scanned back to a local resident, Suzy Lesser. A staff member called Lesser, who arrived in minutes to pick up her missing dog.

“I just started crying and bawling,” Lesser told WISN-TV of receiving the phone call from the Humane Society.

The lake where Moose was found is just 15 miles from where he went missing. Lesser, who could not be reached by ABC News, said she wonders what adventures her dog was on while he was away.

“Where was he for the last four weeks? What was he doing?” she said of Moose, who was 15 pounds thinner when found but in otherwise good shape. “We’re very happy to have him back home with us.”

Gehrke told ABC News that Moose’s reunion with his owner is a good reminder to pet owners to not only microchip their pets, but to also keep their own contact information updated in the microchip registry.