COEUR d'ALENE - It's a local story, really.

It's one of those rags-to-riches stories actually, although the rags part took place on the other side of the state line, Liberty Lake, Wash.

That's where Ginger lived in an abandoned field for 1,420 days - 40 days short of four full years after she bolted from the car of her new owners on the day of her purchase in August 2009.

She lived in the field off scraps left by neighbors.

Like from the employees of Accra-Fab, whose building abuts the brown, 1.25-acre, 67,000-square-foot field in Liberty Lake.

They left her food.

As did Austin Sisemore, of Coeur d'Alene.

In fact, Sisemore helped Ginger get rescued and that's the riches part of the story, because Ginger's new owners - the ones who finally trapped the then skittish dog - moor their boat at the docks downtown near The Coeur d'Alene Resort, and now the dog and her new family go out on the water about once a week.

"Oh, yeah, she's already been boating on Lake Coeur d'Alene," said Carmel Travis, a real estate agent in Pullman, Wash., and certified dog rescuer who caught Ginger in June after Sisemore's tip during a trip to the Lake City. "She's expanding her horizons."

Ginger has since been on family trips to the San Juan Islands, and shopped in Bellevue Square, too.

But it was when Travis was at the marina dock on Lake Coeur d'Alene in June that she saw a man, who turned out to be Sisemore, trying to catch a lost golden retriever at the entrance to nearby Tubbs Hill.

They didn't catch the retriever.

But Sisemore appreciated the effort, and said he had seen a dog in a heck of a pinch not too far away.

"Gee, I sure wish someone could catch this dog who lives in a field in Liberty Lake," Travis said she remembered Sisemore saying at the time.

"I turned and said, 'what?'" Travis said.

Sisemore had learned about Ginger after seeing her alongside the highway when he was driving to Calvary Chapel of Spokane Valley. After trying to catch her, Sisemore said a neighbor in a nearby RV park told him about the field. Sure enough, when Sisemore drove by the field on Wednesdays and Sundays, he could spy her brown head.

"Every time I'd cruise by and that dog's head would pop up," he said, adding he left bags of dog food in the field ripped open, with McDonald's hamburgers placed on top.

"I prayed for it," Sisemore said. "I prayed for a good ending."

So at the base of Tubbs Hill, after Sisemore told Travis of his wish, Travis followed Sisemore to the dirt field. The temperature was in the mid 80s.

"And there she was, just like he said she'd be," Travis said, of spotting the dog, who would run away if chased, in the vacant lot.

A certified dog rescuer means that Travis passed Missing Animal Response (MAR) Technician training through Missing Pet Partnership in 2008. She has equipment to help pet owners in a pinch, but it's not a business for her. She doesn't make money, she said. On July 6, she returned to Liberty Lake and set a trap baited with a double cheeseburger.

"She had one tick on her," Travis said. The dog, named by Travis after Tina Louise's character, Ginger Grant, on the old television show, "Gilligan's Island," also didn't have predatory drives, indicating to Travis that the dog did indeed get by on donations.

But when Travis took Ginger to an emergency veterinary clinic in Spokane, they discovered Ginger was microchipped, but the Liberty Lake phone number the chip was registered to had been disconnected. Through online sleuthing, Travis tracked the dog's owner down via her sister on Facebook. The woman, according to Travis, said she adopted the dog from a Spokane shelter and she escaped through the open car door when they arrived home. The owner could not find her and gave up looking and since moved to Coeur d'Alene and later to Billings, Mont.

The Spokane Humane Society confirmed they adopted this dog out on Aug. 16, 2009, Travis said. It turned out the dog had been living within .8 of a mile from where her new home would have been the entire time.

But when the former owner told Travis she didn't want the dog anymore, well, the rags to riches story was completed - with plenty of summer left for weekly boat rides.

"It's just a neat ending, that's what I was praying for," said Sisemore. "Please let there be a good ending to this ... And there was."