Still need more convincing that dogs are our four-footed guardian angels? From the AP:
A newborn baby abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog who apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday.The baby girl, named "Angel" by hospital workers, was clad in a tattered shirt and wrapped in a plastic bag when the dog found her Friday, according to Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the baby was discovered in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forest in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
"When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies," Mwalimu told The Associated Press Monday.
The 7-pound, 4-ounce infant was taken to a hospital and "is doing well, responding to treatment. She is stable ... she is on antibiotics," said Hannah Gakuo, spokeswoman of the Kenyatta National Hospital.
The baby was found after two children reported hearing an infant's cries near their wood and corrugated metal shack.
"I followed them outside and we started looking around the compound and a nearby plot," said Mary Adhiambo, the children's mother.
They eventually found the tan mixed-breed dog lying protectively with a puppy beside the mud-splattered baby wrapped in a torn black shirt, Adhiambo said. The short-haired dog with light brown eyes has no name, residents said.
The stray dog that saved the child also was being cared for Tuesday, a day after its last surviving puppy died for unknown reasons, said Jean Gilchrist of the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.Animal welfare officials named the dog "Mkombozi," or "Savior," and gave the dog its first bath and de-worming.
"She looks a bit depressed, so we'd like to examine her to see if she has a temperature or any other problem," Gilchrist said. "She wasn't happy when we all poured into the compound. She decided to leave, but kids in the compound brought her back for the bath because she was full of ticks."
Mary Adhiambo, a resident in the compound where the dog lives, said Mkombozi apparently found the baby Friday in a plastic bag.
The dog reportedly dragged the baby across a busy road and through some barbed wire to the shed in the poor Nairobi neighborhood where puppies from two stray dogs were sheltering.