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Ukrainian Mine-Sniffer Wins 'DogManitarian' Award at Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival gave a “DogManitarian” Award on May 27 to Patron, a Jack Russel Terrier who has helped sniff out over 200 landmines in Ukraine.

Although the film festival usually celebrates movie stars, it also runs the Palm Dog awards, which, since 2001, recognizes the best dogs to appear on screen. Unfortunately, due to the war, Patron was unable to travel to Cannes to receive the award, so another Jack Russel named Opium received it on his behalf.

Earlier this month, Patron was awarded a medal by President Zelensky for his work. Credit: Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine via Storyful

Video Transcript

- --couple of members of Ukrainian Pavilion. But first of all, I would like to show you who we are about to give Palm DogManitarian 2022. Here we go.

[AUDIENCE CHEERING]

And this is the explanation if we run the clip.

- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

- Amid a hellish invasion of Ukraine, a rare and very, very cute bright spot. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a ceremony Sunday honoring service personnel for their work de-mining areas across the country. Well here comes Patron, standing there with a waggy tail perhaps no idea they're there for him. Seen here in a small snooze during a press conference over the weekend, Patron has risen to fame for his service.

Since the war began, the pint-sized Jack Russell Terrier has detected upwards of 200 explosives and prevented them from detonating. The awards were given out at a briefing alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who made a surprise visit. Trudeau was not the only surprise big name making their way to Ukraine over the weekend--

- Thank you for the clip, which tells you all you need to know, the Patron was the major success story in bomb disposal and was as you saw, a little Jack Russell. And today with us here, we have a fabulous little Jack Russell to accept the world from Cannes, please come to stage--