Dog Almost Gone Before Sailors Rescue Him

(Jan. 28) – It was the trip of a lifetime for a lucky dog, but it's almost certainly not one he would want to take again.

The dog somehow made his way onto the icy waters of the Vistula River in Poland, drifting about 62 miles toward the Baltic Sea, where temperatures have dipped in places to minus 29 degrees.

He was first spotted by firefighters on the riverside, but they were unable to reach him.

Eventually he was seen, looking lost and bewildered, on an ice floe about 18 miles out to sea by the crew of a Polish boat named Baltica.

Their first thought was that he was a seal.

When they realized it was a dog, the crew members set about trying to rescue him, first with a net, then by pulling him aboard an inflatable dinghy.

"It was obvious the dog was very weak. He almost went under the surface of the water," said a senior officer aboard the boat, Jan Joachim. "Then he was taken by colleagues and wrapped up in a nice warm blanket."

The ship's engineer, Adam Buczynski, told Reuters: "He didn't even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes."

The crew's next task: finding the dog's owners.