VICKSBURG, Mich., Oct. 28 (UPI) — A stray dog and her puppies inadvertently turned a Michigan man’s bachelor party into an animal rescue mission.
Mitchel Craddock and seven of his friends traveled to go four-wheeling in Tennessee when they came across a stray dog.
“We were cooking bacon with the door open. The next thing you know, there’s this dog sitting right at the front door. She wouldn’t come inside, but she sat right there,” Craddock told ABC News.
The dog was exhibiting clear signs of hunger and dehydration and appeared to have routinely hung around the group’s cabin.
“She was very friendly but very skittish— I thought maybe she had been booted out of a house before,” Craddock told MLive.”We’d ride for 4 or 5 hours, or go into town, and every time we’d come back, she would either be sitting on our doorstep or under one of our trucks.”
The group eventually named the dog “Annie,” after Little Orphan Annie and eventually realized she had recently had puppies.
“After we gave her a bunch of food and water, she started producing milk again,” Craddock said. “So we figured if she’s making milk, her pups can’t be that old.”
Craddock and his groomsmen set out into the woods, where they discovered Annie’s seven puppies inside of a hole.
“We set each pup individually down in front of her, and she nuzzled their faces, and she checked out the pups, and to the person holding them, she gave the look of ‘It’s OK, I trust you,” he said.
The group bathed the puppies to rid them of dirt and fleas, but found them all to be generally healthy.
“Every single one had a big fat belly on them. The mom had given the pups literally everything she had,” Craddock said.
The eight members of the bachelor party wound up adopting each of the dogs, including Annie, and bringing them back to Michigan.
“Once we got the puppies out of the hole, we knew we couldn’t just leave them, so we started figuring out where they would go,” Craddock said. “Thanks for coming to my bachelor party. Here’s a puppy.”
