Togo on the Disney Channel.
The story is about the lead sled dog that was the hero of the 1925 sled relay that carried vital medicine to Nome, Alaska, to fight an epidemic.
The dog Balto gets the popular credit for that feat because he was the lead dog of the final leg to Nome, having run 30 miles that night.
But the real hero was Togo, a dog who ran over 250 miles over the toughest terrain of the run...at the age of 12 which is like 85 in dog years. The big question was whether Togo would survive the odyssey.
I had never known that Togo was the real hero leader dog, and that Balto was given celebrity that Togo actually deserved. After watching the movie, I checked the facts--it's not a secret at all, Togo was the real hero.
Interestingly, Willem Defoe plays the musher who owned Togo. What's interesting is that unlike most of Defoe's roles, in this movie he plays a man who has a wonderful relationship with his wife, and he is a friend of great repute and respect by everyone in the area. There is actually no human conflict in the movie--all the humans are striving together. The antagonists are the disease and the forces of nature.
Defoe does play somewhat to form, however. As a musher, he's still kind of maniacal...but it took being maniacal to get the job done.