Michael J Fox’s beloved dog Gus has died.

The Back to the Future star confirmed the sad news on Instagram, where he posted a picture of the 12-year-old Great Dane-Labrador mix and said he would ‘miss’ having Gus around.

‘Gus — great dog and loyal friend, we’ll miss you,’ the TV and movie star, who was seen in NYC walking with a cane on Saturday, wrote in his caption for his 1M followers.

Sad loss: Michael J Fox’s beloved dog Gus has died. The Back to the Future star confirmed the sad news on Instagram, where he posted a picture of the 12-year-old Great Dane-Labrador mix and said he would ‘miss’ having Gus around. Seen in 2019

Goodbye Gus, rest in peace: ‘Gus — great dog and loyal friend, we’ll miss you,’ the TV and movie star wrote in his caption for his 1M followers

Michael also wrote ‘NTLTF p. 220-222’ which is a reference to the pages in his 2020 memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, in which he praised his ‘wonder dog’ for being a constant companion to him throughout his battle with Parkinson’s disease.

In the book, he wrote: ‘I didn’t rescue Gus. You can argue that he rescued me, but he’d be too modest to make that claim.’

Back in November, the 59-year-old actor spoke about the impact Gus had made on his life, saying the pooch helped him feel less ‘isolated’ amid his health battle.

His bestie: Michael also wrote ‘NTLTF p. 220-222’ which is a reference to the pages in his 2020 memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, in which he praised his ‘wonder dog’ for being a constant companion to him throughout his battle with Parkinson’s disease

Michael – who went public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 1998 – said: ‘You know that no matter your situation, no matter what you feel, this animal is with you and is connected to you.

‘And you feel. It’s a force multiplier,’ he shared.

‘Your instinct when you have a chronic illness is to sometimes isolate and make your world as small as possible so you don’t have much to deal with, but a dog will open you up.’

Heading out in Manhattan: Fox was seen walking with the help of a cane as he left his apartment in New York City on World Parkinson’s Day, April 11

So close: The actor with his longtime wife Tracy Pollan at HBO’s Very Ralph premiere at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 2019

And Gus played a particularly important role in Michael’s life when he had to relearn how to walk following a 2018 surgery to remove a tumor from his spinal cord, and returned home from hospital in a wheelchair.

He said at the time: ‘He kind of circles the wheelchair with this low kind of woof woof, woof woof, and sat in front of the wheelchair right in front of me.

‘And he looked at me, and I said, “It’s going to be okay.”‘

His big hit film: Seen in Back to the Future Part II (1989) with Christopher Lloyd of Taxi fame