Lucky pup gets cruise

Snickers the cocker spaniel earned his holiday though, the poor little pup spent three months adrift on a 48-foot boat and survived four months on a tiny Pacific atoll where his owners left him when they were rescued by a cargo vessel. Now Snickers is in Honolulu, rescued by Captain Evans Hoyt and the crew of NCL’s Pride of Aloha.

Apparently the owners of the catamaran abandoned their pets after their vessel developed mast problems after setting out from California. In the first week of December, the vessel finally drifted to Fanning Island, a populated but tiny atoll about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. It hit a reef and the couple swam 200 yards to shore with Snickers and their macaw named Gulliver.

Fanning is one of 33 scattered coral atolls that make up the remote nation of Kiribati. In March, the government of Kiribati, which technically owned the animals, decided to have them destroyed, but an American pet lover offered to take them in, if they could only be brought to him.

Then NCL offered to pick up Snickers, and Hawaiian Airlines volunteered to fly him for free to Los Angeles, where he will be handed to his new owner who couldn’t bring Gulliver back the same way, but an elaborate plan is hatching to move the macaw to Christmas Island and eventually to Los Angeles, one of two U.S. ports that will accept exotic birds.

Snickers had a luxurious week as chief pet on the Pride of Aloha. He was a little uneasy with all the attention but is a very different dog now than when the cruise ship first came to his rescue, according to crew members. ‘[He was] very unsure of himself and a little bit suspicious of people and it was amazing how just in the course of the first 24 hours and day by day he turned right around.’ Captain Hoyt said.