When Barking Mad Dog Rescue got a call last month about a litter of puppies abandoned in a field in Romania, rescuers rushed out to the field as quickly as they could to collect them. When they arrived, they found the puppies had been left in a shoebox, and were shocked to see that they were only a day old.
The puppies had literally just been born, and were thus clearly too young to be away from their mom. Unfortunately, their mom was nowhere in sight, so rescuers loaded the puppies into their car, hoping for the best.
“They’ll need hand-feeding through the night for some time,” Barking Mad Dog Rescue wrote on its Instagram account. “Poor innocent little mites.”
Unfortunately, Barking Mad Dog Rescue sees cases like this all the time, and often takes in litters of abandoned puppies who need round-the-clock care. Volunteers with the rescue were prepared to care for the puppies as long as they needed to ensure they would grow up healthy and happy — but then they had the best idea.
The rescue had recently taken in a mama dog who had lost her puppies while living on the streets. She was heartbroken and defeated when they found her, and it was clear she missed her puppies so much and couldn’t understand what had happened to them.
“She was walking round with food in her mouth trying to find them to feed them,” Hilary Anderson, cofounder of Barking Mad Dog Rescue, told The Dodo. “So sad.”
When the shoebox puppies arrived in the rescue’s care, they realized that the puppies needed a mom and the mama dog they had just rescued needed puppies to care for — so they decided to bring them together.
As soon as the mama dog saw the puppies in need, her maternal instincts kicked in, and she rushed over and began to dote on them. The puppies were also thrilled to meet their surrogate mom, and began to feed from her as soon as she was close enough.
“No niceties or intros,” Anderson said.
Both the mama dog and the puppies had a rough time on the streets, but now they’re all safe, and will hopefully all be up for adoption and go off to find their forever families very soon.