A puppy escaped from his collar in New York City. He swam across the Hudson River and ended up in New Jersey.

A service dog from New York City got loose and took a long solo journey – swimming across the Hudson River and ending up in New Jersey. Bear the service dog got out of his collar when something spooked him on Saturday. He ran 30 blocks and jumped in the river that sits between New York and northern New Jersey.

“The story just seems so insane to me that I cannot believe it’s true,” Bear’s owner, Ellen Wolpin, told Inside Edition. Wolpin got Bear just last week as a service dog for her son, who has seizures. 

The Hudson River is about a mile wide, and while that swim may be difficult for humans, Bear is a mix of a Bernese mountain dog and Leonberger and a natural swimmer, according to Inside Edition.

Wolpin spoke to a local Upper West Side blog after the six-month-old puppy went missing and said patrol boats were out looking for him. “I’m hoping for the best but that may be that he got to N.J. and someone grabbed him and he’s with a good home now,” she said – which seems a bit prescient, considering the dog did end up in New Jersey. 

Bear wasn’t discovered for about two days, when someone heard him barking near a pier in Edgewater, New Jersey, according to Inside Edition. Firefighters were called and rescued him. “The dog was literally standing at the end of the pier…it looked like a dog statue,” Edgewater firefighter Thomas Quinton told Inside Edition. “It was like it was ready to go, he was tired of being underneath there.”

They used Bear’s microchip to find his owners. 

The fire department shared photos of Tuesday’s early morning rescue on Facebook. CBS News has reached out for more information and is awaiting response.

Caitlin O’Kane

Caitlin O’Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.