A heart-warming story emerged this week from one of Greece’s highest peaks with reports that a nine-month-old dog managed to survive for nine days without food and in sub-zero conditions at an altitude of roughly 1,900 meters, until a group of climbers located and rescued him.

The young canine, named “Asproulis”, Greek for “whitey”, was located along the Tsoukarela summit above the alpine resort town of Metsovo.

According to reports, the dog followed a group of French climbers nine days earlier and subsequently lost its way along the snowy mountain peaks, apparently afraid to descend the steep slopes. “Asproulis” lived with his owner Christos Zacharis in a nearby village, Haliki.

On Thursday morning, a group of Greek climbers who heard about Asproulis from Zacharis, who runs a traditional café in the village, subsequently ascended toward Tsoukarela, when they suddenly heard dog’s desperate cries.

“We were climbing to reach the summit… and as we were going up, we heard some cries. The little dog must have noticed us and seen us first. We hadn’t seen him because he’s white and blended into the snow, but he was calling for help. So, our group split in two: most continued the ascent, and the more experienced climbers went to find the dog and carry out the rescue,” according to Marina Koraki, a member of the climbing team that rescued Asproulis.

The dog was located at an altitude of 1,900 meters with snow covering the entire surface.

As Koraki said, “the collar around his neck was hanging loosely.”

‘We named him Lucky’

“We know that his owner calls him Asproulis because of his color, but we named him ‘Lucky’ because in the end he really is lucky,” she added.

“The distance from here to where he was found takes about 3.5 hours to reach. The highest peak there is 2,200 meters, and the dog was found a little lower. Behind that peak there’s a cliff, and he must have been afraid—he’s only nine months old. He had never left the village before, but he followed a group of French mountaineers who had stayed here with me, and the next morning when they set off, he followed them,” Zacharis said, who had been searching for him all these days.