It’s a Miracle! Abandoned Pregnant Dog in Critical Condition Still Able to Give Birth to 7 Puppies
On November 11th, a distressing report came in about a pregnant dog in critical condition. The situation was heart-wrenching – the dog had been abandoned in a box with a broken neck, just days away from giving birth. There were signs of violence on her frail body, and her puppies were at risk.
The rescuer who responded to the call, Kola Kariola, described the moment he first saw her as heartbreaking. The dog collapsed in his hands, her belly bleeding profusely. He rushed her to the vet where she received a blood transfusion and was stabilized, but her condition was still dire.
Kola consulted with his vet who recommended moving the dog to a larger hospital for further treatment. Her neck needed surgery to save her life, but they decided to wait until after she gave birth to her puppies. The next 48 hours were tense as the brave dog fought for her life and gave birth to 7 puppies, although 2 of them were stillborn. She was unable to feed her puppies, so Kola and his team had to step in and provide nourishment for them.
Despite the odds, the puppies survived, and it was truly a miracle. The mother dog, who was named Belinha, finally underwent her much-needed neck surgery, which was successful. She was then moved to a special room for post-operative care and observation for 72 hours. It was crucial for her to recover fully before being reunited with her puppies.
Kola expressed his gratitude towards Protetora Carol, who played a crucial role in saving Belinha’s life. It was her quick action and dedication to rescuing animals that brought Belinha to safety and enabled her to receive the medical care she desperately needed.
Belinha’s story is a testament to the resilience and strength of animals, as well as the power of compassionate individuals who go above and beyond to help those in need. It’s a reminder of the importance of reporting cases of animal cruelty and neglect, and taking action to help animals in distress. Belinha and her puppies are now on the road to recovery, thanks to the unwavering efforts of Kola, his vet team, and Protetora Carol. Their story is one of hope, compassion, and the incredible bond between humans and animals.
Dogs actually do respond better when their owners use cute ‘baby talk’, study finds
Dogs’ brains are sensitive to the familiar high-pitched “cute” voice tone that adult humans, especially women, use to talk to babies, according to a new study.
The research, published recently in the journal Communications Biology, found “exciting similarities” between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with such a high-pitched tone feature.
Humans tend to speak with a specific speech style characterised by exaggerated prosody, or patterns of stress and intonation in a language, when communicating with individuals having limited language competence.
Such speech has previously been found to be very important for the healthy cognitive, social and language development of children, who are also tuned to such a high-pitched voice.
But researchers, including those from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, hoped to assess whether dog brains are also sensitive to this way of communication.
In the study, conscious family dogs were made to listen to dog, infant and adult-directed speech recorded from 12 women and men in real-life interactions.
As the dogs listened, their brain activities were measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan.
The study found the sound-processing regions of the dogs’ brains responded more to dog- and infant-directed than adult-directed speech.
This marked the first neurological evidence that dog brains are tuned to speech directed specifically at them.
“Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it can help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a nonhuman species skilled at relying on different speech cues,” explained Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study.
Scientists also found dog- and infant-directed speech sensitivity of dog brains was more pronounced when the speakers were women, and was affected by voice pitch and its variation.
These findings suggest the way we speak to dogs matters, and that their brain is specifically sensitive to the higher-pitched voice tone typical to the female voice.
“Remarkably, the voice tone patterns characterizing women’s dog-directed speech are not typically used in dog-dog communication – our results may thus serve evidence for a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication,” said Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.
“Dog brains’ increased sensitivity to dog-directed speech spoken by women specifically may be due to the fact that women more often speak to dogs with exaggerated prosody than men,” Dr Gabor said.
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