How BabyDoge saved 12 puppies from euthanasia in Cruzeiro, Brazil

In Brazil, this is how the story usually ends.

A stray gives birth in a place no one is watching. Most of the puppies are never counted. The few who reach a shelter usually reach one that is already full, and a full shelter cannot save every dog that comes through the gate. No space and no money behind it, and the dog is put down.

Fourteen were born on a pile of debris in Cruzeiro.

This is the story of how twelve of them were saved before that ending could reach them.

A call the shelter could not ignore

In early July, a report reached a local shelter in Cruzeiro, in the interior of São Paulo state: a stray mother dog had given birth inside the yard of a private cold storage facility, in the gap between rubble and rubbish where nobody was meant to be living.

The shelter, Amantes e Protetores de Animais de Cruzeiro, knew exactly where a litter like that was headed. A litter that size, with no owner behind it and no vaccines in it, is more than a full rescue system can easily take on. Some of those dogs get adopted. A lot of them get put down.

So they reached out to us at BabyDoge do Brasil.

We said yes to covering their care on the spot, so nobody had to wait on money before going in. With tens of millions of strays in Brazil, timing decides a lot. Get to a litter early and the puppies have a chance. Wait, and there is often nothing left to save.

15 July: the day of the rescue

On 15 July we got authorisation to enter the site. The plan was simple on paper. Get the twelve puppies out, and get the mother too.

It did not go entirely to plan.

When our team and the shelter arrived, two of the fourteen puppies had already died. Twelve were alive. The mother was there, watching, but far too frightened to let anyone near her. We tried. She would not be caught.

The twelve puppies, though, we could reach. One by one they came out of the debris and went straight into a car, and straight to the vet.

They were a mess. Filthy. Crawling with ticks and fleas. Underneath all of that, though, the vet found something better than we had feared: twelve structurally healthy puppies.

From a debris pile to a clean bill of health

At the clinic the puppies were dewormed and given their first V10 vaccine, a shot that guards against as many as ten canine diseases, among them distemper and parvovirus, the two that kill unvaccinated puppies most often in Brazil.

Then they were cleaned up, warmed up and fed.

Today all twelve are eating solid food. All twelve are healthy.

That is the part worth sitting with. Ten days ago these were a litter nobody was counting, in a yard nobody was watching, on the exact path that ends in a needle. Now they are twelve puppies with vaccines in them and a real shot at a home.

The mother is still out there

We are not going to pretend this is a clean, finished, happy ending. It is not. Not yet.

The mother is still living in that yard. She is skittish and does not trust people, with every reason not to. Our team is going back on 23 July to try again.

Twelve safe. One still out there. We are working on it.

The ending these puppies were born towards

Here is the context that makes a local rescue matter far beyond Cruzeiro.

Brazil has one of the biggest free-roaming animal populations anywhere. World Animal Protection puts the country’s stray dogs and cats at around 30 million. The vast majority never get counted or reported, and never see the inside of a shelter.

A shelter does not automatically mean safety, either. Across Latin America, somewhere between 6 and 8 million dogs go into shelters every year, and about half of them are put down. Half. That is 3 to 4 million dogs a year that arrive somewhere meant to save them and do not leave alive.

That is the ending these twelve were born towards. Two of the fourteen had already lost the fight before we arrived. BabyDoge do Brasil got to the other twelve first.

Proof the mission works on the ground

BabyDoge started in 2021 with a line we still repeat: turn dog lovers into dog savers.

The community has donated $1.5M+ to animal shelters and rescues. In May 2023 it set the Guinness World Records title for the largest donation of pet food in 24 hours — 36,750.88 kg (81,021 lb of pet food), with Best Friends Animal Society.

Those are big, headline numbers. This rescue is what they look like when you zoom all the way in. One yard. One litter. One member of our Brazilian community, camera in hand, doing the unglamorous work of lifting flea-covered puppies out of the rubble before the clock ran out on them.

The record is the proof of scale. Cruzeiro is the proof it reaches the ground.

What happens next

Two things.

First, the puppies. We are monitoring their health day by day, and if all stays well they are headed to an adoption fair on 25 July. The hope is simple: twelve puppies, twelve forever homes.

Second, the mother. We try again on 23 July.

The twelve are safe. There are still more.

Twelve puppies came out of that yard alive, off the path that kills millions of dogs like them every year. That is worth celebrating without a single caveat.

But twelve is twelve out of tens of millions.

The shelter that helped save them is still looking after other dogs right now, and they need food, vaccines, and a home. If you’re able to, consider adopting a rescued dog. If you cannot, chip in for the food and vaccines that rescues like this depend on.