A ray of hope under the ruins… More than two hundred hours after the devastating ones earthquakes at southern Turkeyrescuers located and two dogs were retrieved alive in Samandag and Antakia.

The mayor of Istanbul posted a short video on Twitter showing rescuers removing a small dog from the rubble of a house in Samadag, Hatay province. According to Ekrem Imamoglu, the owners of the animal were killed. They had settled in Samadag after escaping the earthquake that hit Izmir in 2020.

“Unfortunately, only this little friend of ours was pulled out alive,” the mayor’s office said.

In Antakia, Portuguese rescuers located and recovered a golden retriever, alive but exhausted, from the basement of a collapsed house. The dog spent more than 200 hours in its underground grave and suffered wounds to its legs and muzzle from possibly trying to dig itself free.

Andre Rosa, the coordinator of the team of specially trained dogs, told the Lusa agency that dogs can withstand more than humans without food, but 200 hours is too long to survive without water.

The rescue of the golden retriever happened literally by chance. The team was heading to another house to retrieve a body when one of the rescuers, Filipa Mendes, gave one of the dogs, Casey, a toy. Seven-year-old Casey, who has a “long history of rescues,” thanked her with a bark and then, like an echo, a second bark answered him.

The rescuers opened a hole in the basement wall and soon saw a… muzzle sticking out. “The group left some food at the scene, so they could catch him,” writes Lusa. It didn’t take long: the dog climbed out of the hole on its own, to the applause of the people. Although he seemed confused at first, after lots of stroking he calmed down, ate and drank. The team christened him “Tuga” (“Portuguese” in slang) and, to complete the miracle, about an hour later his owner turned up looking for him…