01/21/2026
Last Wednesday, a rescue partner pinged us with a shared post about a mama dog in Dinwiddie, VA who was roaming, very pregnant and with a badly embedded collar. We took one look at her photo and knew we’d need to go try and secure her. She had already given birth to TEN puppies last year and animal control came and took the puppies and left her behind. 🤬 And this go around, they also were not helping to save the dog. So with our partner Salem's Light, we headed down immediately with our trap to assess. The concerned neighbor said she hadn’t seen the dog in three days or so, and that she may have given birth. That began a six day effort of a ton of driving, recon, and stakeouts since we had no idea where she had stashed the puppies and there were multiple barns, empty houses and trailers around. 🥲 The clock is always ticking on us to get dogs trapped just ahead of snowstorms it seems… (🤯) and this time is no different ~ those puppies likely couldn't have survived temps this week down in the 20s, and a mega snowstorm on the way.
Mama dog's neck injury was worse than we thought and the collar has caused awful damage. We really can’t even imagine the horrible, physically miserable life she has endured - giving birth to her last large litter a year ago, scavenging alone to survive, then giving birth in frigid temps again, all while suffering in significant pain. She’s safe now, all of the seven week old puppies are safe and warm and healthy so far.
We are SOOOO relieved to have gotten them all out of the cold before it gets way worse. It’s been a very tiring week and we’ll post some updates in the coming days 🙂
Ways to donate:
Venmo:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lostdogfoundation
https://www.salemslight.org/donate-1
