Maggie the Australian Shepherd investigating the puppies

SAINT ALBERT, ALBERTA — It was a one-night match made in heaven for a maternal dog and a pair of young rescue puppies at Barker’s Pet Motel and Grooming in St. Albert on Friday.

The dog in question, an Australian shepherd cross named Maggie, had been boarding at Barker’s for a little over a week when the two nine-week-old puppies were brought in by the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society.

After getting the puppies settled into their kennel on Friday, Jan. 29, Aldred and her family headed out for the evening.

While out at dinner, Aldred used her phone to check on things at Barker’s, pulling up the live feed from the kennel’s surveillance cameras.

She saw a curious thing.

Maggie cuddling with the two rescue puppies. (Photo from the kennel’s Facebook)

Maggie, who had been carefully cooped up when the family left, was sitting in the hallway outside of the pen where the new puppies were being kept. She’d pace a little back and forth to neighboring pens, but always returned to her post as close to the puppies as she could get.

A subsequent review of the evening’s full surveillance footage showed Maggie nudging aside the water dish built in to her kennel’s door, and worming her way out through the opening.

“We watched her on the cameras and she went straight around and she found their room. She paid them a lot of attention and you could see her little tail wagging. And she’d do the little bow down to them and poke them through the chainlink gate of their room. She just decided that was where she was going to stay until we came to get her,” Aldred said.

“It was really sweet. She just had to be with those puppies.”

Source: CBC News