Dog swims, walks nearly 20 miles to reunite with family

A dog fell overboard Sunday morning then swam 6 miles and walked another 12 before reuniting with her family the following day.

Rylee, a 10-month old Belgian Malinois, fell off a boat on Lake Michigan, according to WPBN.

"In retrospect I remember her coming out here to see where I was going," Kristin Casas told WPBN. "My poor assumption was that she would go back into the cabin with her dad."

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But Rylee was nowhere to be seen either on the boat or in the water nearby.

After making a "dog overboard" distress call, fisherman and the U.S. Coast Guard tried searching.

The wife of one of the fisherman runs the Lost Dog Search Team which uses social media to help reunite lost pets, according to WPBN.

"We ended up having over 20,000 people look at our post online and when I saw that I was like... we're going to find the dog," Lynn Fiedor, who runs the search team, told WPBN.

Fiedor shared the information about Rylee and got leads almost immediately.

The dog was spotted later Sunday. However when the Casas went to the beach where the dog was last seen, Rylee wasn't there.

The next day Rylee was discovered by some campers. This time the Casas were able to find her.

"Our optimism grew... and we found her in 15 minutes," Ed Casas told WBPN.

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