Rupert and Finni's dramatic disappearance was marked by the death of a neighbour and battles with wild kangaroos.
Two cheeky dogs have been found after a wild five-week adventure in South Australia's Murraylands saw them face the elements and battle kangaroos.
Rupert and Finni often go wandering in their backyard.
It usually starts with one going next door to fetch the other and ends with them biting off more than they can chew, such as taking on kangaroos.
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But things took a different turn in March when Ben Dunbar's attempts to find the dogs went unanswered by his next door neighbour, Chris Scanlon.
"I found him passed away in the paddock, and hence that's why the dogs had run away and disappeared," Dunbar said of Chris' shock death.
Signs and searches for the lost dogs didn't bring the pets any closer to home.
Hope wore thin as the weeks drew on, until a Facebook post pointed Dunbar to a nearby but largely empty island on the River Murray.
This prompted one final three-hour search in a dinghy and on foot.
"Then just out of the blue, Rupert just popped out of nowhere, I was nearly in tears," Dunbar recalled.
Both dogs were there - starving and a little withdrawn but alive. Finni was covered in the unmistakable signs of kangaroo warfare but home at last.
In these parts of the state, devices that pick up signals for trackers to send a location are few and far between.
Even if they did work, Rupert somehow found a way to lose two collars during the adventure anyway.
"It's been a bit of a bizarre five weeks to be honest with finding Chris and both of the dogs missing, there's kind of been a bit of an emptiness," Dunbar said.
With the passing of Chris, Finni will now stay with his son, Cody, in Mannum, almost 40 kilometres away.
But the distance won't keep them apart for long.
"Looking at him it just reminds me of the good times that he had with my dad and I had with my dad and all the family," Scanlon said.
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