“It was initially thought that the surveillance camera had failed, until our team members saw it on the spot to confirm that it wasn’t an illusion.” 26 October, Chernobyl’s Dog head Andrew Kovalenko, in an interview with the New York Post, recalled the first scene of the discovery of the blue dog, still with a slight surprise in the tone.
The discovery took place in the early morning of mid-October, when two members of the organization—the 28-year-old veterinarian Lina Petrova and the 35-year-old wildlife guide Mikhail Sokolov—travelled to the abandoned village near the Chernobyl 4 reactor, “Prippia” as usual, to perform sterilization and health inspection missions. The area belonged to the middle-risk zone of nuclear radiation, with light blue light anti-radiation clothes, head protective hats, face-covered semi-transparent masks, green toolboxes with anesthetic needles, sterilizer tools and radiation detectors in their hands, and slowly walked along the waste road of the weeds.
At about 9 a.m., the two people heard the barking of dogs next to the ruins of a collapsed residential building. Mikhail was the first to push aside waist-high weeds and saw three medium-sized dogs chewing on a dead hare in the ruins. "The sun was shining on them at the time, and I noticed at first glance that something was wrong-their hair was not the common khaki or black, but had a light gray blue tone, and even had a faint luster in the sun., especially the hair on the back and tail, the blue color is more obvious." Mikhail wrote in his subsequent work notes.
Lena immediately raised the camera she carried with her body and took dozens of shots in a row. The photo shows that the three dogs are similar in appearance, presumed to be the same litter, with upright ears, thick tails, slightly rough but fluffy hair, unevenly distributed blue hair, light color of abdomen and paws, close to normal light brown, while obvious gray-blue on the back and head. Sensing the human approaching, the three dogs immediately stopped eating and stared warily at Lena and Mikhail, whimpering in their throats, then turned and ran deep into the ruins, disappearing among the broken walls.
Since the day's mission was to sterilize rather than capture, and the team did not carry special capture equipment, the two can only temporarily record the location and the shape of the dog. On October 27, the Chernobyl Dog organization synchronized the photos with the findings to the local ecological sector and foreign media, the "Blue Dog" event was officially exposed and quickly made a technological and ecological appearance in many media around the world.
Chernobyl’s dogs quickly developed a plan for catching and investigating the blue dogs after the exposure.Andre Kovalenko said in an interview that the primary goal was to safely catch the three blue dogs, by scientific testing to identify the cause of hair bleaching, while evaluating their health status and determining whether there are potential radiation-related diseases.
In order to ensure smooth arrest without harming dogs, the organization specially adjusted equipment and staffing. In addition to their regular radiation-proof suits, gloves and face masks, the team members also carried upgraded versions of capture tools-trap cages with infrared sensing functions (built-in beef jerky that dogs like as bait), remote sedative blow pipes (to prevent dogs from being scared and running away during close contact), and portable radiation detectors (to monitor the radiation dose in the capture area in real time to ensure the safety of team members).
In the early morning of October 28th, a five-member capture team entered the area where the blue dog was found for the first time-the edge of the abandoned village of Pripyat. The environment in this area is extremely complicated: the walls of collapsed residential buildings are covered with cracks, the window glass has already been broken, the ground is covered with thick fallen leaves and weeds, and some sections of the road still have the radiation warning signs of that year. The team members were divided into two groups, one group set up trap cages around the ruins, and the other group carried cameras and infrared telescopes to observe in the distance.
"These dogs are very alert and seem to be particularly sensitive to human activities." Mikhail Sokolov was responsible for the observation mission. He saw through the telescope that three blue dogs were wandering about 50 meters away from the trap cage, occasionally coming close to sniff, but never entering the cage. "They will communicate with each other. When one dog approaches, the other two will stand guard in the distance. Once they detect our movement, they will immediately send a signal and the three dogs will evacuate together." The arrest operation that day lasted for 6 hours, but ultimately failed to be successfully captured due to the dog's high vigilance and complex terrain.
Andrei Kovalenko said: “We plan to install a micro-camera around the cage to observe the dog’s activity rules, such as their daily feed time and return route, and then adjust the catch time and type of catch according to these data. At the same time, we have contacted the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Ecological Institute to ask radiation ecologists and geneticists to participate in the follow-up investigation – once the catch is successful, the dog’s hair samples will be detected immediately to analyze whether there is a sedimentation of radioactive substances, whether the hair pigment cells are genetically mutated due to radiation, or whether other environmental factors (such as special food, pollutants) cause color changes.”