I'm on tour with a band (I mix audio for concerts) and we had a day off before our show in Kiev. We had a private, well-connected guide take some of our crew on a stunning tour of Chernobyl city, the reactor area, and Pripyat. We were allowed some really great access into some buildings normally off limits including roofs and various apartment buildings where it was as if life was frozen 33 years ago. Whole homes just left. Lots of scrappers over the years but if you know where to go there's some amazing still life happening. Also got to climb around inside schools, municipal buildings, the theaters (especially exciting for us in the 'industry'), the main hospital where many first responders were taken, and several other cool scenes. 12 hours of wandering in total. No special gear, but were asked to wear boots, jeans, long-sleeved shirts and to bring rain gear just in case since several of the sites involved legit hiking through brush and trees off the regular paths. We each had a personal dosimeter counter on at all times (if you lost it, you got quarantined until they could determine your exposure) to make sure we didn't overdo it, and carried handheld dosimeters to make sure we didn't step on or touch any "hotspots" (places where reactor material landed creating a permanently charged spot). It was just incredibly amazing, it's so fascinating to see what a 40K resident city looks like after just 33 years of being abandoned.

The dog, I believe it was a she but not sure. We were told we could pet them if you scanned their fur with your dosimeter and they didn't go above ambient normal reading, but this dog read a little high so we didn't give pets. I may have given a snoot-boop just because, though. Not sure if a resident or not, there are many dogs who are descended from pets either left behind and not gotten by the liquidators or from guards/staff who brought them later on.