VANCOUVER -- A Vancouver family is sharing the unbelievable story of their five pound dog and her journey back home after she went missing for 17 days.

Chilli, a Yorkie-Chihuaha mix, vanished into Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Park in August after she got spooked by other dogs.

“She beat the odds,” said Sienna Leone, one of the dog's owners. “She beat cars, she beat racoons, she beat coyotes."

The family was walking in the park in August with Chilli, when their attention turned to away from her for a split second to break up an altercation between their other dog and a neighbour’s.

Hoping to find their loving pup, the family plastered the area with hundreds of posters.

“We probably put up 300 to 400 of these posters,” Leone said. 

But they knew that the tiny dog’s chances of survival in the wild were low.

“Every time the phone would ring my heart would sink to my stomach,” said Gaby Leone, Sienna’s mother.

The family received news of a few sightings, but then weeks went by without any sight of Chilli. 

Still, holding out hope, they went to the extreme of actually sleeping in the park and laying out some of their old clothes in the forest to attract Chilli with their scent.

“We slept at this park, we did everything you can think of,” Leone said. 

Then, the remarkable happened. A phone call came in from someone who’d found the pup. Chilli had turned up near someone's home at Southwest Marine Drive and Granville Street -- nearly seven kilometres away from where the dog went missing. 

“Our house sounded like a hockey stadium. We were jumping, we were crying, screaming. We couldn’t believe she was coming home,” Leone said. 

A journey of that length would take the average person an hour and half to walk, and would have required Chilli to cross several busy streets.

The news is relieving for not just the family but the entire neighbourhood, whom the Leones are thanking for their support.