And the rescued baby:
Posted on 05/09/2005 7:47:41 PM PDT by Dubya
Stray dog in Kenya retrieves abandoned baby, takes her to litter of puppies
By Rodrique Ngowi The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya -- A stray dog saved the life of a newborn baby after finding the abandoned infant in a forest and apparently carrying it across a busy road and through some barbed wire to her litter of puppies, witnesses said.
The stray dog found the infant, clad in tattered clothing, in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forests in the capital of Nairobi, Stephen Thoya told the independent Daily Nation newspaper.
The dog apparently found the baby Friday in the plastic bag in which the infant had been abandoned, said Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the animal was guarding its puppies. The seven-pound, four-ounce infant was taken to the hospital for treatment on Saturday.
"She is doing well, responding to treatment, she is stable. ... She is on antibiotics," Kenyatta National Hospital spokeswoman Hanna Gakuo told The Associated Press from the hospital, where health workers called the infant Angel.
Kenya's media often report the abandonment of newborns by mothers. Poverty and the inability to care for the child are seen as the root cause of the problem. Most people who abandon babies are never caught.
The child had not yet been claimed.
"Abandoned babies are normally taken to the Kenyatta National Hospital because it is a public hospital," Gakuo said. "People are now donating diapers and baby clothes for this one." http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/wor.../printstory.jsp
I smell BS.
Why? It's been all over the news.
I say give it back to the dog. Who says foster parents have to be humans?
Maybe the Romulus and Remus story isn't mythical at all?
"It's been all over the news."
Wait, you'll see. This story stinks of BS.
I don't----animals are kinder to their young than many of us,unfortunately.
How about Kipling's The Jungle Book? (At least the Disney version...)
Cheers!
Should name the baby either Romulus. Can't do Remus, for obvious reasons.
And the rescued baby:
Sows often eat their offspring.
As Radar O'Reilly said once on MASH, "Dogs are people too!!".
that pic does not look like a 3 day old baby
Good for the dog.
We have people in our country that care more about their own pets than they would care about an abandoned infant.
I didn't know that!
Maybe they forgot to convert it from "dog years".
Thank so much for the pictures. What a cute baby.
Nor does that dog look like she has been nursing a litter.
Dog milk is great for fast growing babies.
Just hope no one decided that the dog looked like a nice roast....
You have my vote. In the real world, stray dog finds baby, dog has lunch.
The dog took it to feed it to her pups is my guess.
Dog milk is great for fast growing babies.
Yeah, but it has some side effects. 
It's a sad state of affairs when an animal is a better mother/father than a human.
But this story reminds us once again that it's not to late to invest in acquiring your share of the unclaimed 34 million dollar estate of the late Lord Bathyard...
DINGOES ATE MY BABY!
Heh, I just got one of those in my email today. You mean I really can't collect the money? :)
Man, that really was a stupid comment. Mother's Day story?
Actually, there are lots of reports of dogs taking in
other animals babies, and trying to raise them.
James Herriots books I believe have a few stories of
dogs like his one dog, who wouldn't leave a sick cow
alone, and guarded it, till it got cured of its disease.
But it is possible that it was looking for lunch also....
The dog didn't look exactly fat,...so may have been hungry.
I swear, on one of the Denver stations. I won't name the guy here to avoid embarrassing him.
ROFLAJAC!!
Must be a pretty big dog. Wolf size, or nearly so, to carry a 7 lb 4 oz baby through all that.
So what's the lesson here? Stray African dogs care more about human babies than American liberals?
dogs do too
My 42 pound (very small) Lab has retrieved such items as a Canada goose, a lawn chair, a largish possum, and a bowling ball (I'm sure it weighs at least 10 or 12 pounds). Her neck was sort of bulging out with the bowling ball and she was staggering a little, but she could carry it (I took it away before she busted a tooth).
. . . and I forgot about the six-foot chunk of quarter split hickory log she dragged off the wood pile and brought to the front door as a trophy . . .
I don't doubt that the dog took the baby from where it was dumped, to her den full of puppies, and that this resulted in the baby surviving when it otherwise wouldn't have. And maybe she did it out of a maternal instinct to nurture helpless little crawly things and keep dragging them back to the den when they wander off. Or maybe she thought the baby looked like a good hunk of meat, that a nursing mama dog could sure use, and a human saw her dragging the baby towards her den and relieved her of it before it became dinner.
The dog is now claiming the baby followed her home.
He's unclaimed, so he has no siblings. If he stays single or marries an only child, nobody will every call him uncle. Besides, aren't there plenty of Toms who are uncles?
Maybe they're forumula babies. Did you ever think of that? Hmm? Or maybe she's just a flat dog. Flat mothers can nurse, you know.
Article said the baby was in a plastic bag. I visualized the dog dragging it by the bag.
Sometimes animals do instinctively "mother", even cross species. I used to have a spayed female husky mix, fixed without ever having puppies, who would try to mother every litter of kittens born within her reach. She'd groom them, carry them around, and lay on her side nudging them to her belly, but of course having never had puppies she had no milk and they'd just sort of squeak and mew at her in puzzlement. Never hurt a one, just got them a bit sloppy from big husky lovins.
I have little doubt she would have instictively taken to a human child the same way, as she was just all around a good natured and gentle dog who seemed to be a natural with younguns. A dog who's been raised around humans normally doesn't think of them as food. It's just not their nature, generally.
Anyone have any idea what breed or mix the dog in the article is? I think she's quite lovely....gorgeous markings and a wise, gentle expression.
How about this one?
Just wondering how the dog knew it would be a Mother's Day news item. Pretty clever, that dog. Maybe it was trying to outdo the 'dogs and cats living together' story:
A dog feeds two tiger cubs in a zoo in Hefei, east China's Anhui province in this picture taken on May 2, 2005. The tigers mother, who gave birth to the two cubs on May 1 is unable to produce enough milk and the zoo keepers found a dog to act as the wet nurse. CHINA OUT REUTERS/China Newsphoto
If I had to gess, I would say that it is a hybridized tan BASENJI.
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