This recently released photo of the dog rescued after several days on an ice floe in the Baltic Sea shows just how alone the poor fellow was. It reminds me of a passage from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

Fortunately the crew of a passing scientific research vessel took pity on him, and now he is the ship’s beloved mascot. Read more about his plight and his rescue in our latest update. I wish he could tell us how he survived, what was going through his mind, and what he did about things like sleeping and keeping his footing, during this multi-day journey. If he were a human, he’d already have a book deal out of this.

Photo: Ryszard Moroz / Associated Press