THERE was only one thing to do when Jarvis the Jack Russell got lost during a walk miles from home – he hopped on to a ferry to cross a river and followed his nose back to his own doorstep.

When his owner lost him and left him trotting around happily in a Cornish country estate, he carried on having some fun in the woods before taking the next ferry home.

When the ferry tied up, he trotted down the slipway, just like all the other passengers, jumped on and found himself somewhere to sit.

At the other end he calmly walked off the ferry and set off on the two-mile walk home.

His owner Vivienne Oxley said: "I just couldn't believe it. I was so relieved." Click here!

Jarvis vanished from Mrs Oxley's sight while out walking at Mount Edgcumbe, in South East Cornwall, with her two-year-old granddaughter Kaytie.

Soon after their arrival Jarvis “bolted off”. At first Mrs Oxley thought nothing of it, since he had run off several times before, but when he failed to return to her calls, she started to panic.

She said: "I was really, really upset. He had gone off a couple of times, but just around the corner, not out of sight. Something must have spooked him."

A distraught Mrs Oxley spent half an hour trying to track Jarvis down and even enlisted the help of the wardens.

But it was getting late and Mrs Oxley decided she had to head home with her granddaughter, taking the Cremyll ferry back to Plymouth and walking the two miles back to Stoke.

Once Kaytie was safely home, she planned to return to the estate to search for the six-year-old terrier.

But a few hours after his disappearance, Mrs Oxley received a call from the warden to say there had been a sighting, matching Jarvis' description, on the Cremyll ferry.

He said Jarvis seemed to know exactly where he was going, calmly walking onto the ferry.

Mrs Oxley was about to make her way to the ferry when her husband, Tony, called to say Jarvis had miraculously turned up at home in Stoke.

Mrs Oxley, 56, said: “I didn't expect to see him again. I thought he would get run over.

"When I got home he was just sat in the window as if nothing had happened."