Three puppies were rescued on Monday from the ruins of a mountain hotel in Italy, which has been buried under snow since being hit by an avalanche six days ago. The Abruzzo sheepdog pups were rescued from under the debris of Hotel Rigopiano in Central Italy, giving search teams hope to find the 22 people still missing.

“Now, the priority is to get them seen by a veterinarian, even if at first glance it seems that they are in very good health,” a rescuer said. The puppies were born to Nuvola and Lupo, the two sheepdogs of Hotel Rigopiano who had managed to escape the snow after the avalanche last Wednesday.

A member of the Forestry Corps said it was hard to find the puppy trio initially. “Then we heard this very tiny bark, and we saw them from a little hole the firefighters had opened in the wall,” Sonia Marini said, according to Mashable. “Then we expanded the hole and we pulled them out.”

While finding the puppies helped to lift the rescuers’ spirits, a spokesperson for the firefighters, Luca Cari, emphasised that the canines were found in an isolated part of the hotel – in the boiler room – and locating them did not necessarily mean that the missing persons would be found, too.

So far, seven people have been confirmed dead in the disaster, while nine were pulled out from the snow, BBC reported.

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