Last week, while aboard a crab-fishing boat off the coast of Labrador, Canada, Mallory Harrigan and her colleagues noticed something unusual. There, about 4 miles from shore, was a rather sizable mushroom-shaped iceberg — and it had an unwitting passenger stranded atop it.

"We thought it was a baby seal," Harrigan told The Dodo.

But then they got a closer look.

Turns out, the animal riding the iceberg was not exactly a seafaring species.

It was an Arctic fox — and he was in real trouble.

Rather than leave the fox to face the grim fate that awaited him, Harrigan and her colleagues decided to try to help. They pulled up alongside the iceberg in their boat, and wrangled the frightened castaway to safety.

"We were able to get him aboard even though he fought it," Harrigan said. "We knew we were his only chance for survival, as the winds had changed and were driving all the ice farther out to sea."

While the fox had good reason to have given up all hope, hope was now restored.

Harrigan and the other unlikely fox rescuers quickly cobbled together a little bed aboard their boat and offered food to the exhausted animal so he could regain his warmth and strength.

Then they began the journey back to dry land together.

Once back to the harbor, Harrigan and the crew gave the fox a few more morsels — and then they set him free.

"We dropped him off in an old doghouse," she said. "He shook himself off and that was it!"

It may have only taken a few minutes for Harrigan and the others to go out of their way to rescue the fox, but that simple act of kindness changed everything for him.

"We're glad to have saved an animal," Harrigan said, noting the fox seems to be doing well, and appears occasionally to remind his rescuers of the life they saved. "We can still see him from time to time!"

Luna is obsessed with hedgehog toys. Big ones, small ones, old ones, new ones — the 1-year-old pit bull mix loves them all.

“We couldn’t really figure out ‘why hedgehogs,’” Alexa Ferguson, Luna’s mom, told The Dodo. “She has a variety of different sizes and colors, but I’d say she’s probably got like 10 hedgehogs.”

Before Luna became the proud owner of 10 hedgehog toys, she was a stray, wandering around the streets of San Bernardino, California.

“[Animal control] found her roaming the streets alone,” Ferguson said. “She was really skinny, and they felt that maybe someone wasn’t treating her right and just let her go. She was ... taken to one of the kill shelters in San Bernardino. They waited to see if someone claimed her or adopted her … but no one wanted her, so she was put on the euthanasia list.”

Thankfully, a Canadian rescue group, RainCoast Dog Rescue Society, got her out of the shelter and set her up with a foster family in Vancouver, Canada. Then in June 2017, Ferguson and her fiancé, who live in Victoria, Canada, agreed to foster Luna with the possibility of adopting her.

“We had been wanting a dog for a very long time,” Ferguson said. “We saw a picture of her and were like, ‘Yeah, she’s pretty cute.’”

Luna did have some “quirks,” Ferguson and her fiancé noticed.

“We have a feeling that whoever she did live with before … probably kept her in a crate for most of the time,” Ferguson said. “Her paws were so fresh — it was like she’d never walked on pavement before, and after going for a couple of walks, her paws started to bleed — they were so tender.”

In general, Luna didn’t seem to like the outdoors — at least, not at first.

“We live right across from the ocean, and we took her down there when we got her, and she was absolutely terrified of the ocean,” Ferguson said.

Then Ferguson and her fiancé bought Luna her first stuffed hedgehog.

“Maybe she never had other toys ... but she was obsessed with it from the beginning,” Ferguson said. “We got her other toys, but she didn’t care about them — just the hedgehog.”

Luna played a bit with her hedgehog, but she mainly wanted to cuddle with it, Ferguson explained.

“She’s very lazy, and has always been very sleepy from the day that we got her … and she’d climb up on the couch with her hedgehog and fall asleep,” Ferguson said.

While Luna fell in love with her hedgehog toy, Ferguson and her fiancé fell in love with Luna — and they officially adopted her.

Luna eventually grew to love the outdoors, and she now takes frequent trips to the beach and forest, and enjoys playdates with other dogs. But nothing has changed for Luna when it comes to hedgehogs. She doesn’t only like the original hedgehog toy — Luna adores every new one her parents buy for her.

“We subscribe to BarkBox, and so we have tons and tons of toys,” Ferguson said. “She destroys the other ones, but not the hedgehogs. It puzzles me so much.”

“She loves to sit out in the sundeck ... and she brings them out there and sucks on them and falls asleep with them,” Ferguson added. “She has pretty bad separation anxiety, and she has this habit of bringing toys to the door while we’re gone. So we come home, and there’s just a pile of toys at the front door. And there’s always hedgehogs.”

“We just don’t know why she loves them, but my best guess is that it’s some sort of comfort for her,” Ferguson added. “The first toy that she had was some kind of representation of safety for her, but just the fact that she carries it around with her and takes it outside, falls asleep with it — it’s adorable.”

Whatever the reason is for Luna’s obsession, Ferguson and her fiancé think they’re the luckiest people in the world for having Luna in their lives. Hedgehogs included.

“I’ve never had a dog that appreciates things so much,” Ferguson said. “She’s just so expressive, so thankful and she has such a personality. She’s just the happiest dog.”

Doby was taken in by The Cat House on the Kings sanctuary in California when he was just a kitten. No one is sure where he came from or how he ended up on his own, but before long it became clear that Doby was a little different from the other cats. He suffered from cerebellar hypoplasia (CH), which makes him a little wobbly, as well as a cleft nose — which makes him look like he has two noses.  

Despite his differences, Doby didn’t seem to have any idea that he was different from any other cat at the sanctuary. He became particularly close with a blind cat while he was there, but when she got adopted without him, he suddenly became very anxious and reserved. When a member of Friends for Life Rescue Network (FFLR), Jacqueline Santiago, went to the sanctuary to take some cats into the rescue, she noticed little Doby and decided to take him, too. 

As soon as Doby arrived in the care of FFLR, Santiago made a post about him on Instagram — and that’s how his new family found out about him and fell in love.  

“I had stayed in touch to send her photos of my two polydactyl bobtail sisters that were adopted through [the ]rescue about a year before,” Jeanne, Doby’s new mom, told The Dodo. “I saw his little bat face and that was it. We didn’t know a lot about him at first, so we did our research on cerebellar hypoplasia and cleft palates to make sure our home was safe and accessible for him.”  

Since Doby was small for his age and had some special needs, he had to be fostered for a few months before he could be adopted, but once he was finally declared healthy, his new parents welcomed him into their home with open arms. His foster family did a great job of helping him come out of his shell, and by the time he came to his forever family, he had grown into a spunky, playful little cat.  

“His foster mom is the absolute best and we are so thankful that she took a scared and anxious little kitten and taught him to love and trust people,” Jeanne said.  

Doby adjusted to his new home right away, and his new parents fell even more in love with him. He’s a very curious cat and will chew pretty much anything he comes across, just to check if it’s tasty or not. He loves to follow his parents around the house, and needs to be around a member of his family at all times.  

“Doby is a happy, chirpy sweetheart,” Jeanne said. “He has so much love in his tiny little body. He sings to us in the morning when we wake up and chatters at us all the way to the food bowl. The bowl is always full, but he likes for one of us to stand with him while he eats.”  

While Doby still suffers from CH, he has a very mild case — it just makes him a bit unsteady as he bounces around the house. His most unique feature is definitely his cute cleft nose — and his parents wouldn’t have him any other way.  

“We joke that Doby has a double snoot, so there is more snoot to boop,” Jeanne said. “His cleft nose means that he gets winded really easily while he is playing. He huffs and puffs while he goes after feather toys, but otherwise breathes normally. He can still eat without too much difficulty, but he is really messy.”

Doby’s parents also have to keep an eye on his health to make sure he doesn’t catch any upper respiratory infections, as they will affect him much faster and more severely because of his nose.  

Other than that, besides wobbling a little and being an incredibly messy eater, Doby is just like any other cat. He loves playing with his two cat sisters, and he seems to have absolutely no clue that he looks any different from them. He’s just a little cat enjoying life, and his parents are so happy that he’s theirs.