“We Thought It Was a Dog”—Workers Rescue Animal from Frozen Lake, Only to Discover It’s a Wolf at the Vet

Construction workers in Estonia risked their lives to rescue a frozen dog from Pärnu river — only to learn it’s a wolf.

On Wednesday, Robin Sillamäe, Rando Kartsepp and Erki Väli were doing dredging work on the Sindi dam when they spotted, what they thought was a nearly frozen dog, trapped in the icy body of water, Estonian Union for the Protection of Animals revealed in a post shared on Facebook.

The Estonian Union for the Protection of Animals explained that the workers noticed the animal was extremely calm and docile — assumably why they believed it was a dog.

“He was calm, slept on my legs. when I wanted to stretch them, he raised his head for a moment,” Kartsepp told Estonian newspaper Postimees.

While the doctors were skeptical in believing the “dog” was just a domestic canine, it took a local hunter to reveal it was actually a wolf.

The hunter, whose identity has not been revealed, was also able to determine that the wolf was only 1 year old.

Fearing that he may return to his wild nature following treatment, the veterinarians placed the wolf in a cage while he recovered.

“At first he was so done in for, he didn’t resist at all,” veterinarian Tarvo Markson told the Postimees. “But once he started to get an idea of the situation, I felt things might quickly take a turn for the dangerous. We got him into a cage.”

Within a day, the wolf regained it’s strength and was released back into the wild. In addition, the wolf was sent out in a GPS collar by researchers from the national environment agency, BBC News reported.

“We thank the heart of the young men who went to help this wild animal,” EUPA said.