Maggie and her pups after a rough first few days. (Northern Tails Frontline Animal Rescue/Facebook)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Puppy Love

A dog on a mission: Puppies and mother saved in Waterhen

Jun 4, 2024 | 8:38 AM

A dog named Dooby became something of a curiosity in Waterhen Lake First Nation after he began rescuing puppies last week.

“I honestly don’t think he knew what he was doing,” said Stephanie Mamer, founder of the Northern Tails Frontline Animal Rescue.

“I honestly think he thought they were toys or maybe they were crying, and he took them home to grandma,” she said, referring to Dooby’s owner’s mother.

After a litter of puppies was born under the deck of a house, the dog, a strange mix of features including a wirehair face with a lab and shepherd body began taking them away from the mother whom Mamer has since dubbed Maggie.

“He watched her give birth,” she said, noting that the woman who reached out to her about the mother didn’t own her. The woman had been smoking in her car later on when she saw the dog run out with something in his mouth.

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“She tried to chase him,” said Mamer, noting he took three of the seven to his owner’s mother.

“He put them on a blanket that they had under the deck, so I don’t know if he thought they were play toys or he thought they were hungry ‘cause they were crying,” she said.

“He didn’t hurt them and he got them all the way there.”

After that, the hunt for the mother began in earnest.

“It’s a lot easier for her to feed them than me,” Mamer said.

Eventually, Mamer found the mother and brought her back to the rescue.

“He actually saved her life,” she said.

“If he hadn’t stolen her puppies and dumped them at his house, I wouldn’t have had the orphans – at the time, they were orphans in my eyes – I wouldn’t have had to look for mom and then when I found her, she was extremely ill.”

Though Maggie seemed no worse for wear as she didn’t have a fever, once Mamer bathed her back end, she discovered the new mom had a major infection.

“He had taken them the day she gave birth and I had gotten her three days later and I’ve never smelled anything like that,” said Mamer.

The rescuer brought the dog to the vets the next day and it was discovered there was something in her uterus. She underwent surgery right away, performed at the Woodland Veterinary Clinic.

“I let her feed one last time all her babies and then we sedated her when she still had her babies,” she said noting she didn’t what to expect when she went to pick her up.

“We tried to give her kids back slowly, like a couple at a time,” she said referring to her and Veterinarian Dick Nitschelm.

“She was not having it, she just demanded all of them – all of them – ‘give me all my children.’”

Since the surgery, two pups of the three Dooby rescued have since passed due to not being able to get the initial colostrum from their mother’s milk. There were five puppies in the litter.

“I was just hoping when they went back on mom from bottle feeding that they were only going to get better and better, but they were half the size of the ones that she fed,” Mamer said.

“She was feeding those with such an infection.”

That infection turned out to be from her uterus which was twisted up into a tennis ball.

However, since then, Maggie is healing well.

“Now she’s so happy, she just wags her whole body when she sees us,” said Mamer.

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

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