This made the movie “Homeward Bound” look like a walk in the dog park.
An Australian shepherd named Nanuq put Lassie to shame after em-bark-ing on a staggering 150-mile journey across the frozen Bering Sea near Alaska before being returned home to his family.
“I was like, ‘No freakin’ way! That’s our dog!” Nanuq’s owner Mandy Iworrigan, who lives in Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, told the Anchorage Daily of being reunited with her plucky 1-year-old pup.
Iworrigan had been visiting Savoonga — located 37 miles away on the same island — with her two kids, plus Nanuq and his sister, Starlight.
Their trip took a troubling turn after both of the canine siblings vanished partway through the visit.
While Starlight turned up a few weeks later, her brother was nowhere to be found.
Iworrigan scoured the town for Nanuq the next day, but to no avail, so she returned home after enlisting some friends to keep their eyes peeled for her wayward canine.
Nanuq had been missing for a month before the family finally got word that their pooch was in a place called Wales — some 150 miles northeast of Savoonga in the Bering Strait, NBC News reported.
Residents of the town had reportedly started circulating photos of a missing pooch, which caught the eye of Iworrigan’s father.
“My dad texted me and said, ‘There’s a dog that looks like Nanuq in Wales,’” recalled the hopeful owner, who found it hard to believe that her pup made it practically across the frozen strait.
After reactivating her Facebook account, Iworrigan was able to confirm that the lost pup was indeed Nanuq.
Getting her beloved pooch home was no easy feat, as there are no direct flights from Wales to St. Lawrence Island.
Fortunately, Iworrigan was able to get Nanuq on a charter transporting kids from Wales to Gambell for a Junior Olympics tournament.
He was packed aboard on a crate lent to her by a teacher and arrived home on Thursday, April 6.
A heartwarming Facebook video shows Irrowigan’s 8-year-old daughter shrieking excitedly as she sprints towards the aircraft’s cargo hold to greet her long-lost dog.
Despite his lgrueling ordeal, Nanuq was in near-perfect health — except for two large bite marks from an unidentified animal.
“Wolverine, seal, small nanuq — we don’t know, because it’s like a really big bite,” said Irrowigan, referring to the Siberian Yupik word for a polar bear from which her wandering pup took its name.
The family is still baffled as to how Nanuq ended up more than 150 miles away from home.
However, Iworrigan speculated that he got up to some pretty epic adventures during his journey across the sea ice.
“I have no idea why he ended up in Wales. Maybe the ice shifted while he was hunting,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he ate leftovers of seal or caught a seal. Probably birds, too. He eats our Native foods. He’s smart.”
Either way, Nanuq and Starlight’s ice-capades made them instant celebrities on Alaskan social media.
“If dogs could talk, both of them would have one heck of a story,” Iworrigan said.