"Jack" turned up in Winnipeg, four years after vanishing from his home at Sunshine

THUNDER BAY — When Mike Plas's phone rang on Friday afternoon, the Thunder Bay man was hardly expecting it would turn out to be "the greatest phone call" he'd ever received.

At the other end of the line was a staff member at Winnipeg's Centennial Animal Hospital, asking him if he'd owned a dog named Jack.

Plas hadn't seen Jack since the husky/shepherd mix disappeared three years ago from the place they were living in Sunshine, west of Thunder Bay

Last Thursday, he was picked up by a motorist in Winnipeg and taken to the animal hospital, which was able to track Plas down the next day with the aid of the dog's microchip.

An overjoyed Plas drove to Winnipeg the next day for a reunion recorded by his girlfriend Mackenzie Cutler. The video already had close to 800,000 views by Monday afternoon.

It was an emotional rendezvous for both Plas and his dog.

It "instantly felt like my life was back to normal. Life without him has never been the same," he posted on Facebook.

Plas believes Jack was picked up by someone.

In an interview with Tbnewswatch, he said "He would never have left my house for that long. Somebody saw him and picked him up, and that was it. He's a very friendly dog."

At the time of his disappearance, Jack was wearing a perimeter collar designed to discourage a dog from leaving a yard, but the devices can sometimes fail.

Until the day he vanished, he had never left the yard for more than an hour, Plas said.

On Facebook, he told others who have lost animals to "never ever lose hope. I didn't, and after four years apart in different provinces, we are together again."