Retired Rescue Dog Lilly Has Adopted And Saved Rare African Wild Dog Puppies — The Videos Will Melt Your Heart

A retired Golden Retriever female named Lilly is saving the lives of three puppies that belong to the African Wild Dog breed.

Lilly, an 8-years-old female dog, is acting as a surrogate mother to three African Wild Dog puppies at the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden. Her generous act will ensure the litter survives and helps keep the endangered species alive.

The African Wild Dog puppies, one male and two females, were born prematurely on November 7, to their mother ‘Xena’, a three-year-old female, reported Zoo Borns. Owing to her age, Xena was a grossly inexperienced mother. She showed a complete lack of maternal care, forcing the Zoo’s animal care team to take the painful decision to remove the pups from her custody and hand them over to Lilly, shared Laura Bottaro, Animal Curator at the zoo.

“In preparation for the birth, we had been monitoring Xena 24/7 by video. We knew that she was an unproven mother and wanted to be ready to intervene if necessary. We are hopeful that these dogs will thrive in Lilly’s care and when they reach an appropriate age for socialization we will be able to successfully reintroduce them to their pack.”

After confirming Xena’s inability to care for her brood, zoo officials frantically started the process to find a surrogate mother for the litter. Officials spared no option: they called their colleagues, animal shelters, and dog rescue groups. They needed to urgently find a lactating, domestic dog that was proven to be a good mother and was quite comfortable with people.

As destiny would have it, Lilly, a retired search and rescue dog living in Wichita, Kansas, was enjoying her retired life. She matched all the requirements. Surprisingly, she had just given birth to a single puppy and hence could easily accommodate three others, albeit from a different mother, reported News Channel 4. When Lilly was introduced to the three African Wild Dog puppies, nothing more needed to be done, shared zoo veterinarian Dr. Jennifer D’Agostino.

Though the zoo isn’t intimately familiar with the practice of breeding animal infants in the care of a surrogate mother, the African Wild Dog Species Survival Plan (SSP), of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), has been helping organizations understand and implement the concept.

African Wild Dogs, also known as painted dogs, are critically endangered. Repeated censuses indicates that only 3,000 to 5,000 free-ranging Wild Dogs exist in the wild today. Increasing threats like habitat fragmentation, speeding cars, when combined with intentional poisoning or snaring of the species for use as pets, has deeply threatened their existence. Now, thanks to Lilly, at least three of the species will get a fair chance of survival.

[Image Credit: Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden, Jaimee Flinchbaugh]