As four children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian jungle recover from their 40-day ordeal, a search is continuing for the dog who helped save them.
Wilson, a six-year-old belgian Malinois, was last seen a day before the children were rescued, but the searchers' efforts to get him to return to the group were unsuccessful.
The dog, owned and trained by the Colombian army, vanished during the search for the youngsters but his paw prints were found alongside a child's footprints, indicating their location to the rescue team.
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Now the military has vowed to keep up the search for Wilson, saying: "No one is left behind."
Wilson features prominently in the crayon drawings the children have done in a hospital, which were released by the army.
The children were found on June 9 alone in the Amazon rainforest after the plane they were traveling in with their mother crashed 40 days earlier. She has survived for some days but succumbed to injuries sustained in the crash. Before she passed away, her eldest child reported their mother had urged them to get to safety and find their father.
The children told Astrid Cáceres, director of the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare, they had met a "dog" in the jungle. Ms Cáceres said: "They spoke of the puppy that was lost, and how he accompanied them for a while but that they do not know where he went."
Wilson was last seen a day or two before the children were rescued, but the searchers' efforts to get him to return to the group were unsuccessful.
Army colonel Fausto Avellaneda told Spanish-language news service Infobae that it could be difficult to find Wilson because he was trained as a search and attack dog, rather than for rescue work.
The four children, aged 13, nine, four, and one, were flown by helicopter to the hospital in the capital Bogota.
The Colombian army is still looking for rescue dog Wilson, and have described it as a top priority. “The search has not ended. Our premise: No one is left behind. The soldiers continue the operation to find Wilson,” they said on Twitter, adding a video of the dog.
The children were passengers aboard a plane that tragically crashed on May 1, allegedly due to a mechanical failure. All the adults onboard, including the children’s mother, the pilot, and an indigenous leader, lost their lives in the incident.
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