Kelly Leavens Tarlton was visiting her mother in California when she noticed a pit bull wandering around by herself on the road. Tarlton carefully approached the pit bull and lead her into her mother’s house.
Once she was inside the warm house, the sweet dog sat in Tarlton’s lap and closed her eyes.
Tarlton knew she needed to get the pit bull into a safe place, so she called up Kings SPCA Halfway Home. She spoke to the vice president of the organization, Brooke Rapozo. Rapozo said she would be right over.
When Rapozo saw the pit bull—who she later named Darla—she noticed that the dog was full of milk. So, Rapozo played a video of puppies crying for her:
“Her ears perked up and she got up from Kelly’s lap, and [Kelly] put her on the ground, and went walking at a decent pace,” Rapozo told The Dodo. “We followed her.”
Darla led the two women to a pile of branches on the side of the road.
Darla started pushing the branches aside, trying to get into a hidden spot in the bottom of the pile. Some of the branches had thorns, but Darla didn’t care—she desperately wanted to get to the puppies who were hidden under these branches.
When Tarlton saw that Darla needed help moving the branches, she dove right in:
“Kelly didn’t hesitate,” Rapozo said. “She jumped in. She just went over branches and under branches to the point where I could no longer see her anymore. And that’s when she was like, ‘I found them, I found them!’ And I asked, ‘How many do you see?’”
Tarlton only saw six puppies at first. But then, she and Rapozo moved another branch and found four more puppies. The 10 puppies were tiny, but they were all healthy. Rapozo thinks that poor Darla was dumped in the woods when she was very pregnant. She had no choice but to hide her puppies in these branches.
Tarlton and Rapozo carefully picked up each puppy and put them in a crate. Darla watched quietly—she seemed to understand that these two women were trying to help her and her babies.
“When we finally got all the pups in a crate and got them and Momma into the car she put her face next to the crate, she let out a long breath and closed her beautiful eyes. She was finally able to rest. She didn’t have to worry about herself and her pups being attacked. She didn’t have to worry about finding food. She was safe with her babies,” Rapozo wrote in a Facebook post.
Now, Darla and her puppies are all safely at Kings SPCA Halfway Home’s shelter. They’ll all stay there together until the puppies are weaned. Then, Rapozo will begin looking for good forever homes for the mama dog and her pups. She knows that Darla will be a great companion—despite everything she’s been through, she still loves humans:
“She loves when staff come in to clean,” Rapozo said. “She just wants love. She’ll climb in your lap and definitely put a halt to your cleaning for a solid 10 minutes before she lets you finish cleaning.”
Darla did an amazing job looking after her large litter of puppies out in the woods. Now, she’s finally in a safe space where she and her puppies can get the love and care they need.
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