Strange Families: Dog Adopts Opossum Babies | Dogalize
When animals are presented with orphaned babies, there’s nothing that can stop their maternal instinct, not even the difference of species. Pretinha, a dog from Brazil, has adopted a litter of opossums.
Last month, Stephanie Maldonado, Pretinha’s owner, found the unlucky creatures and wanted to take them to a local wildlife rescue group, but they already had too many animals to take them in. So she undertook the task of hand-rearing the babies herself. Their eyes weren’t even open yet, and they needed to be bottle fed every two hours. Stephanie found a great help from her dog, who was glad to mother them and keep them safe.
“It’s very nice to see all the care that she has with them, licking them all the time and nestling them,” Maldonado wrote on her Facebook page, “They climb on and hold on, and this mama doesn’t mind taking them for piggyback rides.”
It’s been about a month now, and the joeys are thriving. Stephanie Maldonado hopes that when they are grown, they can be returned to the wild.
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Federica Lauda
Source: lifewithdogs