Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Nov 01/02) - No one knows its name or where it came from, but the orange and white dog keeps coming back.

Do you know this dog? Linda Eccles of the Inuvik SPCA and the Arctic Tire dog. - Lynn Lau/NNSL photo

On Thanksgiving weekend, Arctic Tire gas attendant Bill Beveridge saw the tired, hungry dog hanging around the station.

"I let it in and it just flopped down and went to sleep," Beveridge says. "It looked like it had walked for a long way."

He recognized the dog as one owned by a former employee who left town about four months ago. Before the man left, the dog stayed outside the staff house. "It seems to associate Arctic Tire to his last known home," Beveridge says.

To add to the mystery, a taxi driver told Beveridge he'd seen the dog walking into town from the Campbell Lake area about 40 kilometres away.

Beveridge called the SPCA's Linda Eccles, who picked up the dog last week. Eccles says the dog is thin and in poor shape, but she is nursing it back to health.

Since she's taken it, the dog has escaped three times, each time returning to Arctic Tire.

"She's really loyal," says Eccles. "She had a broken heart and decided she was going to come back to that guy after he left."