She didn’t choose the life of the streets; someone had abandoned her earlier. However, when the realization of impending motherhood struck, there was no escaping the harsh reality of the streets. She had no time to find shelter; her babies were coming, and she summoned every ounce of strength to bring them into the world.
Heartbroken, exhausted, teetering on the brink…
This forsaken dog mother exhibited both fragility and incredible strength, a testament to the resilience that all mothers carry within them.
Will her story have a happy ending? Could this suffering lead to something better for once?
Kudos, Momma! The Puppies Have Arrived
The sight of a vulnerable, freshly birthed dog mother lying beside her newborns tore at my heartstrings. The image was a desperate plea for assistance.
This poor dog mother was utterly drained of strength.
How could she be strong when she had been broken in so many ways?
According to her collar, her previous owners had discarded her, likely because she was pregnant. Deprived of proper sustenance, water, or shelter, this gentle soul roamed the streets, searching for a safe place to give birth.
Yet, sometimes, plans simply remain as plans. Labor took her by surprise, forcing her to deliver right there on the street, on a humble piece of cardboard.
Six puppies entered this world that day, though tragically, two of them were angels from the start.
Despite her extreme exhaustion, as soon as she noticed people approaching, the mother summoned the last reserves of her strength and rose to her feet. She had to protect her precious offspring.
Unaware that these people were t here to help her, she went into full defensive mode, acting aggressively to shield her babies. It seemed as though she didn’t realize that there were good-hearted people in the world, and not everyone meant harm.
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The rescue team faced three fierce encounters with the mother before they finally succeeded in capturing her, along with her little ones, and relocating them to safety.
Back at the shelter, the rescuers were relieved to find that the mother had enough milk to nourish her puppies. Now, it was time to nourish the mother herself.
She was ravenous, beyond exhaustion, and yearning for a proper meal.
That day, the mother was fed three times, a stark contrast to the typical one or two daily meals for dogs. She devoured approximately 5 pounds of liver in her first two meals, a testament to her hunger.
After the critical first 48 hours, the puppies began to thrive, growing, opening their eyes, and experiencing the joys of puppyhood.
The mother, though still somewhat traumatized and apprehensive around humans, was making progress. Sooner or later, she would learn to trust people again.
Without the kindness of these compassionate individuals, dog lovers, and dedicated rescuers, the mother and her puppies would have faced starvation.
After all the trials in her young life, the mother was finally granted the life she had always deserved.
We may not be able to save all stray dogs or solve every problem, but at the very least, we can spare a few dollars to feed the dogs on our streets. If everyone were to pitch in, the number of stray dogs in need could be significantly reduced.
Are playful dogs smarter? Study finds link between learning and romping
Canine eggheads enjoy playing with toys and retrieving objects.
“Gifted” dogs, who have a rare talent for learning lots of words for objects easily, also turn out to be more playful than other dogs, a new study finds.
Prior research in humans has shown a link between playfulness and problem-solving abilities, so animal behavior researchers from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, wondered if the same was true for rollicking pups.
What is a gifted dog? In the new study, it was Border collies who had proven in prior research that they were able to learn as many as 12 new words per week and then retain them for months.
To take a closer look at the possible association between giftedness and playfulness in dogs, Claudia Fugazza, a researcher in the university’s department of ethology (the study of animal behavior), and her colleagues asked the owners of 165 Border collies to fill out dog personality questionnaires. Twenty-one of the dogs were gifted and the other 114 were just randomly selected with no testing for word learning ability.
The surveys assessed the personality of the animals in five categories:
- Fearfulness, including fear of people, nonsocial fear, fear of dogs, fear of handling.
- Aggression toward people, including general aggression and aggression in certain situations.
- Activity/Excitability, including excitability, playfulness, active engagement and companionability.
- Responsiveness, such as trainability and controllability.
- Aggression toward animals, including aggression toward dogs, prey drive and dominance over other dogs.
For the evaluation of playfulness the owners were asked to rate their dogs in three areas:
- Dog gets bored in play quickly.
- Dog enjoys playing with toys.
- Dog retrieves objects, such as balls, toys and sticks.
The researchers focused solely on Border collies because earlier experiments found that the breed is more likely to be good at learning new words compared to others.
After collecting the survey responses, the researchers then compared the responses from owners of gifted dogs to those from the owners of dogs who had not been identified as gifted.
Playfulness was the only personality trait that was consistently different between the two groups.
It’s not clear from the study whether it’s the playfulness that helps the dogs learn more words, or whether the extra playful ones ended up with more opportunities to learn, said Fugazza, the study’s lead author, said in an email. That’s because gifted dogs tend to learn words for objects when their owners are playing with them.
Are playful dogs smarter?
Not exactly.
“Intelligence is the result of diverse cognitive traits that allow individuals to flexibly solve different types of problems,” Fugazza explained. “Giftedness refers to an extremely good capacity in the case of a specific skill.”
So, maybe gifted dogs are like people who score high on the verbal part of the SATs.
If your pup doesn’t learn words easily, it doesn’t mean it’s a dumb dog. Adam Boyko, an expert in canine genomics, reassures owners that canine intelligence is more than that.
“Both dogs and wolves are playful when they are puppies, but dogs really evolved to living in the human environment and to responding to social cues,” said Boyko, a specialist in the genetics of behavior and an associate professor at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s not surprising that the more playful ones exhibit better learning in the domain of learning human words. And it’s not surprising that Border collies, who are bred to respond to human cues, show the propensity to learn words more than other breeds.”
Other breeds of dogs might show intelligence in other ways, Boyko said. For example, wolves are very intelligent although they don’t typically pick up on human cues.
“But they can figure out how to escape,” said Boyko. “Where dogs would look for a person to help, wolves would see how humans did a latch and lock and then the wolves would do it themselves to get out.”
Boyko would like to take the study a step further and look at the genetics of the gifted dogs.
“This is a tantalizing correlation that might be meaningful if you are trying to build better service dogs,” he said.
One thing that can’t be determined from the study is whether the playfulness trait spurred owners to interact more with their dogs and thus teach them more words, said Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a professor emeritus at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, CEO and president of the Center for Canine Behavior Studies and the author of “Pets on the Couch: Neurotic Dogs, Compulsive Cats, Anxious Birds and the New Science of Animal Psychiatry.”
Dodman said the study is interesting but needs to be replicated in a larger number of dogs.
“I would also like to see it done in a different breed,” he said.
The new findings might help people who want to buy or adopt a puppy. It suggests that playfulness might be a good attribute to consider.
“The playful ones might be more likely to interact with a person, assimilate words more easily and be more intelligent,” said Dodman.
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