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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Guardian Staff

Pero the sheepdog travels 240 miles back to former home

Pero
Pero, a four-year-old working sheepdog, appeared on his old owners’ doorstep a month after they sold him to another farmer. Pictured here with owners Alan and Shan’s granddaughter Annie May. Photograph: Wales News Service

A sheepdog has made a 240-mile trek to be reunited with his original owners in Wales after apparently deciding that he didn’t want to settle on a farm in Cumbria, where he had been sent to work.

Pero, a four-year-old working sheepdog, will now remain with his previous owners after turning up again on their farm near Aberystwyth, a fortnight after making a break from Cockermouth on 8 April.

Alan and Shan James had sent Pero off to help out on the other farm in March, believing that he would be ideal for the job of rounding up sheep there. Evidently however, the relocation to England was not for the Welsh sheepdog, who abandoned his work in a field earlier this month and embarked on the journey back to his birthplace.

“We’d been told that Pero had disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen,” Shan James told the BBC from the family’s sheep farm in Penrhyn-coch.

“But then, last Wednesday evening, 20 April, my husband Alan went out to check on the animals after supper and there was Pero on our doorstep. It was a bit of a shock, and the dog was going crazy after seeing Alan.”

Eager to piece together the story of Pero’s adventures on the road, the family are now interested to know if any members of the public have had an unfamiliar sheepdog sniffing around for food at any point over the last two weeks.

“When he came back, he wasn’t hungry or weak, so he must have managed to find food somewhere. He must have stopped in places along the way,” added James.

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