A California family says their dog must have hitched a ride to the Pacific Northwest where he turned up at an animal shelter two days after he disappeared.

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Bryan Rapozo, who lives in a suburb of Sacramento, got a call from the Humane Society in Tacoma, Wash., telling him it had their 2-year-old Patterdale terrier and could he pick him up.

"Somebody wanted him and was planning on keeping him," Rapozo told the Los Angeles Times. "There's no way he got from there to here on his own."

Bear was missing his collar, but an implanted microchip revealed his identity to the shelter staff, the Tacoma News Tribune said Sunday

Tacoma is 750 miles from Sacramento, where Bear disappeared on Tuesday. But Rapozo and his son drove up there right away and brought him home, the newspaper said.