Determined animal rescuers had to pull the same pooch from a frozen lake twice in one day.

Video footage of the rescues shows a firefighter in cold weather gear attached to a rope as he inches towards a hole in the ice in Pavlovsky Posad, near Moscow, Russia, on December 15.

As the surface collapses beneath him he carefully grabs the pooch and pushes it towards the edge.

But the desperately frozen dog seems too exhausted to climb out and his rescuer has to push him onto the solid ice.

As other members of the rescue team try to get him to walk towards them the dog simply walks off as the footage ends.

But a second clip from Russia's Emergency Committee shows the same dog trapped in the same lake later on the same day.

And the same astonished rescuers had been called out by a woman who had heard its plaintive yelps for help.

This time, the footage shows, the rescuers tie a line to the frozen pup, apparently a stray, and drag him back to dry land.

After drying it out, rescuers checked the dog's health and gave him to the animal lover who had called them out.

The pooch is now settling in to its new home, according to local media.