ANDERSON, Ind. — Myranda Beach had almost given up hope of ever seeing her beloved Siberian husky, Lobo, after he was lost in a swollen river during a kayaking mishap last month.

“Last I saw him, he was swimming. Next time I looked over there, he was gone, so I just assumed he drowned,” said Mryanda’s father, David Beach.

“I kept thinking I killed my dog,” Myranda added. “The last thing he saw was me being OK, and he was not.”

But 11 days after the June 24 incident, Myranda woke up at a friend’s house to 16 missed calls from her sister, Dalanie Beach, and nine missed calls from her mother telling her they needed to speak with her right away.

“Of course, Lobo was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t want to excite myself,” she said. “It had been the worst 11 days of my life.”

Shortly after she arrived at David Beach’s house, there was a knock at the door, and Myranda found Lori Bond with Lobo.

“Unbelievably, he was home, just like that,” she said. “I was obviously an emotional mess.”

On June 23, the family and Lobo horsed around and kayaked in the flooded backyard of their Anderson home, Myranda said.

“We said, ‘Let’s go kayaking,’” she told the Anderson, Indiana Herald Bulletin. “We had so much fun in the backyard, we thought we’d take (Lobo) to the river.”

Unaware of warnings not to go onto the White River, Myranda and her father put their kayaks into the engorged river about 11 a.m. the next day. Lobo sat at the front of David Beach’s kayak before jumping into the water and swimming alongside, Myranda said.

“For the first 30 minutes, it was a blast,” she said. “Suddenly, there was debris around the kayaks, and my father’s flipped over. I realized we might seriously be in trouble. At this point, it was survival mode. It was scary.”

As they tried to veer toward a bank, Myranda’s kayak also capsized.

“I let go of the kayak. It was either it or me. It wasn’t going to be me,” she said.

As they reached a bridge, David Beach told his daughter to climb onto one of the wooden pylons there.

“I was at a spot where nobody would see me and no one would hear me,” Myranda said. But an unidentified man who pulled up in his car heard her screams and called for help from the Anderson Fire Department.

“It was definitely the scariest thing I’ve been through in my whole life,” she said. “Water is a strong, powerful, deadly thing. I never thought of it like that before.”

Meanwhile, as he continued to hold on to his upside-down kayak, David Beach and Lobo continued to be swept down the river. It wasn’t long before David lost sight of the dog.

Wracked with guilt, Myranda posted desperate pleas on Facebook. She refused to listen to her father and other naysayers who told her over the following week and a half that she would need to accept that Lobo likely died in the river.

On July 2, at her father’s house, Myranda walked through the dining room and saw her father had dismantled and removed Lobo’s cage. That was the moment she first considered that Lobo might not return.

“He said, ‘He’s not going to come back. It hurts me every time I walk past,’” she said.

On July 4, Myranda and her father sent a lantern into the sky with a note to Lobo. He apparently got the message.

The next day, the husky walked through the front door at local Dossett’s Garage.

“He knew. I think he seriously knew it was time to come home,” Myranda said.

Bond, the office manager at Dossett’s, knew someone had been rescued from the river but hadn’t heard about the dog.

“He just walked up to me,” she said. “I was a little leery because when you have the front door open and a dog walks up to you, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

After giving Lobo some food and water, Bond Googled the address she found on the bone-shaped tag attached to his collar.

“He was skinny, very skinny. Such a friendly dog but very skinny,” she said.

Once he was home, Myranda said, Lobo was listless and slow to eat.

“He was nothing like our beyond-hyper husky,” she said. “His diet, to this minute, is a struggle.”

As for getting back to their outdoor activities, Myranda admits she’s a little skittish.

“I don’t think I’m going to go back on the White River. I went out to look for Lobo, and honestly, it was like a soldier coming back from war,” she said.

Bibbs writes for the Anderson, Indiana Herald Bulletin.