When Kristin saved a newborn baby chipmunk, she was shocked that her 115-pound dog Charlie formed such a strong bond with the tiny creature that weighed less than a single pound.
So, when that chipmunk didn’t make it, she had to come up with a solution so Charlie wouldn’t be lonely without his new friend.
“I was hiking up in the White Mountains and I could see something stumbling around,” Kristin tells The Dodo. “His eyes were closed it was a newborn chipmunk.”
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Kristin sat with the chipmunk for about a half-hour waiting to see if its mom would come around.
Ultimately they decided that the baby had been abandoned and that it was best to take the baby chipmunk, which they named Kip, with them.
“We had just seen a couple of garter snakes on the trail, so we just wanted to make sure he was safe. If we had left him, he would’ve been eaten!” Kristin explains.
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Now that Kip was safe, Kristin had to figure out how to take care of him so she gave a vet tech friend a call.
“She walked me through everything after she consulted another vet. They didn’t give him a very good chance,” Kristin said. “They said the first couple weeks would be critical.”
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And Charlie must have known this because he barely left Kip’s side.
“But the unexpected part was our dog Charlie who was just obsessed and immediately in love with him,” Kristin said. “He would just sit and watch me feed him.”
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Charlie comes nose to nose with Kip and would just nuzzle him while he was eating.
“Charlie would just want to lick him and be near him,” Kristin said. “When Kip started opening his eyes, that’s when he wanted to be with Charlie.”
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Kip would bury himself in Charlie’s fur and Charlie didn’t mind that at all.
Sometimes you’d find Kip taking a snooze on Charlie’s back.
“I think he thought of Charlie as like a mother or a comfort he always wanted to be right next to Charlie,” Kristin said of Kip. “I just think there was a comfort for both of them.”
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Kip was doing OK for a while but as he got older, but Kirstin noticed that he was physically slower than he should be.
“He didn’t have that energy. He wasn’t maturing in a way that most chipmunk would,” she explained.
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Kirstin suspected that this was the reason he got kicked out of his nest since his mother realized he wouldn’t be able to mature properly or take care of himself.
She reached out to some vets for advice but Kip was becoming lethargic. He was sleeping a lot more and seemed like he was just shutting down and not going to make it.
“Then he went to sleep and he didn’t wake up the next morning,” Kristin said.
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Charlie was inconsolable.
“Charlie was devastated. I mean we were all sad but he would cry. He would sleep underneath the cage and look for him like ‘Where is he?'” Kristin said.
Kristen knew she had to do something. So, she hooked Charlie up with a stuffed animal chipmunk and he fell in love with it and carried it everywhere with him.
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“It helped so much to bring him out of looking for Kip and for the sadness so he has this new companion that I think has really really helped him move on.”
Watch this beautiful friendship and happy ending in the video below.
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