Paweł Kałuziak is confident when he lets his dog Gucio go off leash as they walk along the wooded trail near their home in Poland. After all, they know this path well, and Gucio never strays far from him. But one day in Early February, something unexpected happened: Gucio did not return to Kałuziak.
When Gucio failed to appear after a few minutes, Kałuziak became concerned.
“He always comes back whenever I call to him,” Kałuziak told The Dodo. “But when I called his name, Gucio did not come back.”
Kałuziak continued to search all through the afternoon, but his dog was nowhere to be found.
For days, Kałuziak searched for Gucio, but to no avail. And then days turned into weeks, but Kałuziak did not give up.
Several weeks later after Gucio’s disappearance, a man walked his dog Diego in the same area where Kałuziak and Gucio walked. Suddenly, Diego tugged on his leash repeatedly, catching the attention of his owner. Diego then led his owner to a deep hole that was hidden in the landscape, and inside that hole was Gucio, tired and too weak to bark. Thanks to Diego, Gucio was found before it was too late.
All told, it’s believed that Gucio had been trapped in the hole for 32 days, surviving on melting snow. He’d grown very weak and thin, but it was nothing Gucio couldn’t overcome with the love of his family.
Read more about this heartwarming story over at The Dodo.
(Image Credit: Paweł Kałuziak/ The Dodo)