The story of the lost children with a happy ending took place in June on the border of the Tyumen and Sverdlovsk regions. The brother and sister got lost in the taiga and could not find their way home on their own, - writes KP Yekaterinburg.
12-year-old Grisha and 10-year-old Vika live in Tyumen. At the beginning of June, they were vacationing with their grandfather in the village, where the family has a summer cottage. In the evening they decided to go fishing, but got lost. After spending a day in the forest and trying to get out to people, they completely missed each other. When grandpa came out of the woods onto the road alone, he realized that the children had probably gone the other way.
Fortunately for the brother and sister, they had their faithful companions with them – a pair of young beagles. The Red Head and Rocky never left the children's side. Dogs have repeatedly beaten off children who disappeared in the Sverdlovsk forest from wolves.
Volunteers, security forces and rescuers were looking for children. More than 600 people were involved in the search. They managed to find the children only on June 8, and the children spent almost four days in the forest. It turned out that the children had gone far away, they were found in the forest of the Sloboda-Turinsky district of the Sverdlovsk region. One of the volunteers on an ATV broke away from the group and when leaving the forest and noticed the guys.
- Their legs were bitten, they were all dirty and hungry. There were two dogs with them," the volunteers say. - We gave them water to drink. They put the children on ATVs, then the dogs. The children were calm, thirsty, hungry. They were frozen and shaking.
The children told the rescuers that the dogs actively helped them survive. The guys were forced to drink water from the swamp and look for quail eggs. They told a story about how they slept with dogs at night to keep warm and how the dogs drove the wolves away from them several times," summed up the volunteer who saved the children.
- Our dogs treat us like their pack, - says Alfiya Shamsutdinova, the children's mother. – The Red Head and Rocky are from the same litter. Mom is a purebred beagle, but dad is a mongrel, and some kind of very big one. And our demigods are now very big too. And loyal. They are essentially puppies yet, they are only six months old. We just wanted to get a dog, but when we were offered to choose one of these two, we couldn't resist. We took both of them.
Everything is fine with the children and dogs now, Alfiya says. They've been through stress, and nothing threatens their health. And she adds that if the Red Head and Rocky are nominated for the award "My affectionate and necessary animal", it will be an honor for the whole family. And the children will be very proud of their rescuers.
Photo from the personal archive of the Shamsutdinov family.