A weekend of action that saw lines out the door for people looking to temporarily adopt a dog in the face of an approaching cold front left an animal shelter in Krakow speechless.

Dubbed “Operation Frost,” the animal shelter KTOZ Schronisko requested on Friday, January 5, that anyone interested in adopting a dog come in right away because the temperature was expected to drop to -5°F over the first weekend of January.

According to a confidential translation from Polish, the shelter posted on Facebook, “We urgently need to make room for them in a closed pavilion because some of our animals live in kennels.”

The shelter also requested that people think about providing foster care for a few days in their homes, but what they received was a late-Christmas miracle.

This was how Saturday morning looked.

And it continued until Sunday.

Following our Sunday closure, we said, “This was an emotional but very challenging day for our staff and volunteers.” The number of people who came to our shelter seemed to go on forever, and it’s really lovely.

By then, the shelter had assisted more than 100 dogs in finding either short-term or long-term homes.

“I’ve been talking to my mum about owning a dog for a long time and I saw an advertisement for winter action on my boss’s story,” Ms. Pani Ola posted on Facebook, along with images of her new dog Hugo. “I was so inspired to act by this bitter cold that I thought, ‘if not now, then never,'” as I was working.

The shelter thanked everyone for their “kind and open hearts” in a separate post announcing the end of Operation Frost.

“Your adoptions allowed us to move all of the dogs from the outdoor boxes inside of the rooms. We are incredibly fortunate and deeply appreciative,” they wrote. “I want to thank each and every one of you for your kind and generous hearts and for every adoption.”