When a puppy that she was fostering refused to eat anything, a Colorado woman says she did the only thing that she felt would save his life: breastfeeding the sickly pup from her own breast.
“I just felt like he just had an hour left. That’s how weak he was, he wasn’t moving and I just did it,” the woman, whose identity has not been revealed, told local news outlet KRDO-TV of her decision to breastfeed the dog. “I didn’t know what else to do, I was desperate and I just couldn’t bear sitting there watching it die.”
The puppy, according to KRDO, is the runt of a litter of orphaned pups that the woman fostered. She has a 15-month-old child and admits that she felt “weird” about breastfeeding the dog, but she insists that the puppy would’ve died had she not taken action. The puppy is reportedly now doing much better and is no longer being breastfed.
According to KRDO, a photograph of the puppy suckling on the woman’s breast has been making the rounds on the Internet after the woman posted the picture on her personal Facebook page with an explanation of why she chose to breastfeed the dog.
While many netizens wondered why the woman didn’t rush the pup to a vet before choosing to breastfeed it, some leapt to her defense. “I think it’s great she did that to save the puppy, why not?” wrote a commenter on KRDO’s website.
This isn’t the first time that a breastfed dog has made headlines. In 2012, mother of two Terri Graham told U.K.’s Closer magazine that she had been regularly breastfeeding her daughter’s dog, Spider, for the past two years.
“Having Spider suckle on my boob means I finally feel complete and a better mother,” she told the magazine.
