Dog rescued by Russian icebreaker crew after a week in the Arctic

A dog has been rescued by sailors after wandering through the Arctic for more than a week, according to Russian state media.

The crew of a Russian icebreaker ship came across the Samoyed deep in the ice fields near the village of Mys Kamenny in northern Russia, state channel Russia 1 reported.

Yegor Agapov, the captain of the Alexander Sannikov icebreaker, told the network the dog approached the side of the vessel as it traversed the sparse and freezing landscape toward an oil terminal in the Gulf of Ob.

Video showed the white dog, named Aika, wagging her tail and walking gingerly on the jagged ice before the crew lowered a ladder for her to climb.

"We put out the ladder, by which the dog climbed aboard on its own. Later, with the help of mobile phone, we established contact with the local population, found the owner of the dog," Evgeny Nagibin, a navigation assistant, told Russia 1.

They took the dog to the nearby village and located the owners, who said Aika had run away during a walk around the village and probably would not had survived without the intervention of the crew.

"The dog didn't go anywhere without us, we have no idea how she got there," said owner Svetlana Chereshneva, a resident of Mys Kamenny.

The Samoyed, a herding dog with a thick, fluffy white coat, is a native breed to northern Russia and Siberia.

Aika's remarkable feat of endurance is rare, but dogs are known for their ability to survive in difficult conditions.

In 2019, a dog was found by workers on an oil rig some 135 miles off the coast of Thailand.

The same year, a French bulldog survived a six-story plunge from a New York building.