Dog Left to Die on Doorstep With Puppy, Then Vets Find Something Odd in Her Stomach

It was a cold autumn night in November 2017. A family in Abbotsley in the United Kingdom found a dog abandoned on their doorstep. Stories like this one are all too common, but this kind of abandonment was particularly cruel.

When the Cambridgeshire police alerted local shelter Fenland Animal Rescue, the shelter sent a team over right away. What they found was truly horrifying.

As their staff posted on their Facebook page, “when our team arrived on scene of this case and realized what they were truly facing, it wasn’t a shock they’d ever experienced before!” Not only had the dog been left in an open crate without any protection from the freezing night, she was a pregnant mother.

This truly heinous abandonment became even worse in the knowledge that the original owners left not only her to die but also her unborn puppies. Unfortunately, her first puppy had frozen to death by the time rescuers were able to reach it. However, the dog, a Chihuahua Terrier mix, which they named Bella, was still in labor!

When they got Bella, who was still whimpering in pain from the birth, to Cromwell’s Veterinary Hospital in Huntingdon, they wrote on their Facebook page that “X-rays confirmed that she had 2 puppies still inside! One was stuck inside the birth canal, with the other still sitting patiently in the womb!” The vets performed an immediate cesarean section to save their lives as well as Bella’s.

The surgery worked, and they got the puppies out alive and safe. During the procedure, the vets realized that Bella was probably only a year old herself! As Fenland Animal Rescue wrote on their Facebook, this was “still too young to have puppies, but not only has she been subjected to this process, but during her time of need, she had been abandoned on a doorstep in the bitter cold, alone and scared, how people can do this is something we will never understand!”

As readers on Facebook noted, the most probable scenario was that someone had bred Bella too early, hoping to make money off selling the puppies. When she had complications, they simply got rid of her as though nothing had ever happened.

As one commenter, Yvonne Wilkison wrote, “Poor baby girl 😢 it sickens me that someone wanted to make money from her, but when the tables were turned and they they needed to spend money to save her life, they dumped her instead of help her 😡”

Thankfully, Bella and her puppies, whom Fenland Animal Rescue named Milo and Boo, managed to recover nicely with lots of love and attention from the shelter staff. Donations poured in after disgusted readers found out about their cruel abandonment.

Fenland Animal Rescue posted an update a month later to let supporters know that “both Puppies, Milo and Boo, are healthy, happy and playful characters that are growing fast! From the pictures, you can see that Bella is still feeding her babies, and she truly is a wonderful mum to both!”

Unfortunately, Bella’s horrible treatment at the hands of her former breeders left her rightfully suspicious of people. “It has been a tough road working with Bella and helping her to rebuild her trust with humans once again.”

The best part of the story was that the shelter posted an update three months after they found Bella, telling all their supporters that they had found forever homes for all three dogs, showing that every animal can make it provided they’re treated with love and compassion.

As for Bella’s former owners (and abusers), we can only hope that seeing the story get so much attention in the area will make them stay away from breeding dogs in the future.