One day last week we got a call that a brindle female we named Ada needed help. A nice person named Jeff had been feeding Ada who had strayed in his yard. Now she was very pregnant and would need more than Jeff could offer, so he contacted Red Lake Rosie’s Rescue for help.
That very day, Dan went and picked up Ada and drove her to the RLRR shelter. There we saw that Ada had a large hole on the right side of her tail that was infected. We took this little girl who looked like a melon to the local vet.
The vet kept her for two days and we decided to bring her home as she would not whelp. The vet could not clean her wound under anesthesia until she had her puppies.
We waited and soon she had one stillborn pup. One more day and another stillborn pup, so we took her to the vet again. Clearly, Ada was having trouble. Ultrasound revealed that she had no more pups. The vet spayed her and cleaned her tail wound and we began antibiotics to heal the wound.
Ada was so sweet, but seemed so depressed and sad about the loss of her pups. Her bags were full of milk and she had no puppies to nurture!
In the meantime, RLRR got a call that there was a litter of orphan pups belonging to a feral dog in a woodpile in danger. Aris brought the orphans to the shelter and we began to feed them with a syringe.
The next day Ada was coming home from the vet, so we thought, just maybe, she may take the litter of 4 orphans – so we tried it and Ada became our hero and took the litter as her own!
What a happy day improving the survival chances of the neonatal pups as well as helping Ada overcome her loss. She is a great mother!